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Rudi and girlfriend (sorry - didnt catch the name!
celebrating HoliThe Tart Of Agra (... cont.)
Back at Bharatpur and the Falcon Guest House, we dug ourselves in. We needed one day to rest up and clean the bikes. The next day, we had been told, was the festival of Holi, one of India’s most colourful and outrageous. ‘Happiness’ is celebrated by people throwing brightly coloured dye powders at each other until the entire population looks like a troupe of clowns. You can imagine what would happen to two foreign cyclists pottering down the road. Then we realized that in fact Holi was the following day… and that it lasted two days, and not just one. So we could do nothing more than eat banana pancakes, watch the movie channel and chat with the few other travelers who drifted through.
David and Marion were a very likeable couple, just traveling around northern India before attending a wedding in Mumbai. They showed us photos of their little mountain home in the Canary Islands. For a fleeting moment I came over all domesticated and very nearly offered to exchange my tent with them. Now Ill never know if they would have gone for it.
On the day of Holi two cycle tourers stumbled in. Rudi and his girlfriend (Slovakia) had flown into Jaipur to start their journey. They were covered in coloured powder, and the odd bruise from thrown missiles. Rudy, looking shell-shocked, took a seat in the garden. “Is it all like this?” he gasped. “I thought cycling across Africa was tough… But this… !”
They only stayed overnight, which was a shame I loved Rudy’s contagious enthusiasm for cycle touring and it would have been great to team up for a while.
The time came when we ran out of excuses. We loaded up, said goodbye to our affable hosts and set off due north toward Nepal.
(... continue)
