Welcome, guest

Thu 29^th January 2009

Okay so we made it to Bhuj and are just about to leave but before we do (Tansy and I) I shall let you know about some wonderful and exhausting experiences.

We traveled over three days to get here and after a saunter in the afternoon and a good nights rest we were up early to get a rickshaw out of town into the village of Nagor. The location of my tale being the Rushy Mead school that is supported by the Rushy Mead foundation set up by the Rushy Mead school in Leicester, where Tansy's dad used to work.

On arrival we got a very warm welcome by the kids and shown round the school until we were greeted outside by a teacher holding little English. Unfortunately our Kutch/Gujarati was limited to hello,what is your name, thank you and how much? We sat and waited until we were very well hosted by the head as she ran round organising the Republic Day/Earthquake anniversary ceremony.

We go special guest seating next to the head of the village and were even presented with gifts that turned out to be small Genesh statues, so much for keeping our load light. The display was spectacular being a mixture of games and performance rather than the dry speeches in a foreign language that I was dreading.

We got musical chairs and sack racing as well as some hopping banana grabbing race and strange wrestling tag. There was a dubious play commemorating the Mumbai incident that we later found out was to do with remembering the victims families rather than always talking of war, not that we should kill the families of the terrorists.

With the ceremony finished and a little confusion but some delicious sugar covered pastries we were invited to had thali at a trustees house which was very delicious and the sweet daal that comes with Gujarati thali was very well received by both of us. As well as something much more like a pudding than we've had culturally for quite some time.

Anyway since then we have explored Bhuj and the seaside town of Mandvi with a boat ride across the estuary. We went to see the Ania Mhal today but will leave for the farm by Ahmadabad tonight.

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