Busses and a story

The night bus was an adventure, 8 hours of the bumpyest ride I ahve ever been on. Chris and I were in the back of the bus and we were catching air while we tried to sleep. I am in Udaipur, which is a beautiful city. We are in a hostel in the tourist quarter of the city. There are more tourists here than Indian people... at least it seems that way.
It is pouring outside, for some reason I have brought the rain wherever I ahve been. When I was in Ecuador a month and a half ago, it was raining on the coast at a time when no rain was supposed to be falling. Then when Becka and I went to L.A. it rained as well. Now in India, it has rained in almost every city I have been too. The local people have been saying things like "this is the first time it has rained like this during the Camel Festival in 25 years." Actaully, the guy in the internet cafe is telling another guy that it never rains in November and December, and yet it is pouring. I'm glad I brought rain gear.
And now for a story, I've been promising one of these for a while. And since it is raining, and I'm exhausted from hiking around the hills yesterday I'll tap away at the keyboard while the rain rolls down the cobblestone streets in sheets.
A week ago or so, Chris and I went to Pushkar to the camel fair. We spent the day wandering around the camel fair gawking at the camels. There were also many horses, and cows that were being traded. One kind of horse, Malawari (spelling?) are beautiful and huge horses, there was one that was going for $120,000 abouts. Anyways, Chris and I decided to hike up a small hill outside of town and check out the temple on top. The hike was more of a walk but when we got to the top it was dark out and we were the only people up there. We walked into the little temple and the Baba( holy man) was in the room with one other guy. We walked in and sat down in front of the little shrine. The other man was named Gangaram, he was very talkative and we passed through the, "what's your name?" and "where are you from?" questions quickly because he spoke quite well. I learned that he was the caretaker of the little shrine. There were crickets everywhere, and well they were hopping into our clothes at various times creating a very animated conversation. I later learned that after the harvest the crickets have no where to live so they come to the cities and inhabit every crack. I have never seen so many crickets. Gangaram invited us to dine with everyone and we had the local dish of bati and dhal. It was very good, and probably the spiciest thing to ever pass my lips. The baba's forehead was covered in sweat. If it was too spicy for an Indian it should have been much to spicy for us. Bati is corn flour made into balls and is quite tasty. The cook Shenkar was a funny guy who spoke almost no english, but the little that he did know was hilarious. He told us some jokes that other tourists have taught him. most were raunchy, and I'm not sure if he totally understood their meaning. After dinner Gangaram invited us to the fair grounds. Shenkar and Gangaram led us to a chai shop where we met some of his friends. At this point it was a party. Gangaram was a people magnet. Soon we had a crowd around us just because of the mix of Indians and Foreigners. He invited some french women to join us and then the stories of broken English and Hindi began. The best part of the whole thing was that Gangaram kept on ordering Chai's for people and then as we were leaving he told me that I was paying for it... haha! I paid, he fed me dinner so I wasn't going to complain.