Balancing

Got up late and felt much brighter - went out past some donkeys removing rubble from within the city and taking it to dump elsewhere and found Kanna, my lovely rickshaw driver, who drove us out beyond the Monsoon Palace into the humpy Aravalli hills to a little Shiva Shrine. We went through villages, passed lakes, saw a man balancing on a horizontal log dragged behind two oxen as he tried to smooth out the lumps of earth raised by the plough, oxen with matching painted horns (it is a matter of pride so they try to use the same bull and cow to do this), an antique Temple Chariot with painted effigies, two men carrying a ladder on a motorbike, monkeys, cows, w' buffalo, goats, kids and children, turbanned men, women carrying enormous loads of grass, large castles of dung patties and and...we finished up at Kanna's home where I watched his wife making crispy buns in a dung pattie fire on the roof and then we ate them below after they had been dusted off, cracked and squashed a bit and dunked in ghee, along with a delicious dal dish made by Kanna and his daughter-in-law on a gas fire. The extended family watched to see that I could eat everything with my right hand – I did and it was yummy. The children learned to use my camera and took 100 pictures – but I have deleted most of these but still there are a huge number to look at if you wish!