An Evening In Rajistan

Saturday evening, we drove to a Rajistani Carnival on the edge of the city. It was such a fun and busy night, filled with so many great activities and memories. To start off, we were greeted with so many snacks. Delicious fried things, this green grain thing, sticky and sweet liquid, some vegetable with red sauce. Moral of the story, we had no idea what we were eating but it was tasty. After our bellies could take no more, they informed us that this was not, in fact, our dinner. Great. And so the night began.

We wondered around this area and watched traditional Rajistani dancers, flame-blowers, rode camels, dressed in traditional clothing, listened to music, made pottery, watched magic shows, puppet shows and stunt men. Then of course, we had our first encounter with the Indian amusement park. Try to imagine that one ride at the fair that makes everyone sick, and is so scary because it is really poorly built and looks as if it will fall to the ground when you are in midair. Well, take this picture that you have and times it by ten, because it’s India. It was so scary, and that’s why it was so fun. We hesitantly handed this man our 15 rupees (about 25 cents) and took our seats on this rickety machine. After we survived the first, we made our way to the second. The ferris wheel. A manually spun, metal machine, run by two men pushing it at the bottom. And the way to stop it from spinning? That’s easy! The men just grab on to the bottom of the carriages and ride it up (hang on the bars) to weigh it down.

After all the fun, we were seated for a traditional Rajistani meal. At this point, I had absolutely no appetite. We had big plates with five smaller bowl. Roti (the tortilla-like grain) in the middle, with all the different masalas and daals on the side. The men kept coming around and refilling absolutely everything. We would say “no thank you, I don’t want another,” only to find two more being piled onto our plates, with the men saying “it’s ok, have some more.” So there we sat, on the ground, with our piles of food and bursting stomachs. So much delicious Indian food.