Nov 22-23 - MEHSANA

We spent the 22nd neel shopping - that is the punjabi style dress opposed to a sari. It was cool. I tried on quite a few colors and styles and ended up with two and couldnt make up my mind, so I bought both. One to wear to a wedding, the other to wear with jeans. We went to a fabric shop and watched M's mom choose fabric, but in the end she did not purchase, but we enjoyed the show. Kim managed to run into the phone box on the way out of the store for her second clumsy move of the trip. Poor gal. :-( I then went in search of a baby bracelet for H's baby, but no luck and it was decided that I should wait until Bombay. We took the dresses to get altered and then came back to the house to rest. In the evening, we went with Manjit and bro to their farm and got some great pictures of the workers and land there. Kim even did her best to milk a buffalo - which, yes, apparently they can be milked (in the meantime, we are both craving buffalo burgers!). Getting into the car when leaving the farm, Kim managed to whack her head on the top of the car having not bent down enough to get in. That's clumsy move #3. We needed to pray for her safety (kidding) so we went to some temples in her city - a Jain Temple and M's Sikh temple. We ran a few errands and then saw the last of her papa's hotels/guest houses - Hotel Janpath(s). When we got home, Kim and I made mashed potatoes since my tummy is still not so sure it wants curry. So that went down ok and then we tried on our dresses. To our dismay, they were so fitted that we could not get into them! M's mom spent some time restitching them and we could get them over our heads again. (hurrah!) The rest of the evening was spent resting and watching tv.

Today (23) we went to a wedding. We went to M's papa's guest house for breakfast and then the bridegroom ad party showed up for brekkie. This party included M's bro's future fiance. She is 18 or 19 and absolutely gorgeous. Her parents live in Libya, so she knew som English and was so nice. We left the house breakfast and followed the party to the bride's house. The band started to play and we walked along the procession with the groom's car with flowers on it. We then ate (again) before going to the tented area where the ceremony would take place. We covered our heads, took off our shoes, and bowed and put an offering down before taking a seat and waiting for it all to start. It took about an hour, with M's father doing the majority of the chanting and organ playing (or something like that) and it was a lovely, but different, ceremony. Afterwards, it was time to eat AGAIN and this time I actually tried some food. It was all good (except for the waterballs - not so sure about those), but my tummy still didnt like it so I begged M to let us leave and we made it back to her JUST in time. Poor me. :-(

Since coming back, we have been researching Sri Lanka and Thailand trip details - hotel and such. Our host for SL has been somewhat MIA and we dont know if we are going to have to plan the trip on our own now. Not having done anything for it because he was planning it all, we are doing our best to map things out. Our Thai hotel is coming along. We switched beaches, but it's the same island - Koh Chang. Anyhow, that's all for now. We leave for our 18hr train ride to Delhi in the morning and will be staying with M's family there and then heading to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Exciting stuff! I just hope my tummy recovers. I'm off to eat some potato-cakes. :-)