Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!
Alex and I made it to the sandy part of the Great Thar Desert, our final farthest stretching destination, in time to watch the sunset on Christmas Day with a couple of camels and play chase-each-other-in-circles with the sweet village boy who brought us out. And sing great hallelujah hallelujah in the open jeep beneath the full starry sky on the ride back to Jaiselmer.

Oh yeah, so we made it to Jaiselmer. Like any good adventure it was kinky, I mean, you know. Like with kinks. We spent two or three days more than was planned in Agra, many hours more than was planned at the Agra train station, and two or three days more than was planned in Jodhpur. The last leg was fairly a fairly epic Christmas Eve escape trick from Jodhpur but we made our bus and even had time to slow down in our rickshaw on the way there to pick up the omelettes that the omelette man had waiting for us.

• The birds in Agra - I guess they are messenger birds, or something, but there are flocks of birds that fly beautiful circles over Taj Ganj which is the part of Agra we were staying in. They are perfectly syncronized in their finest turnings like one body, like, you know, a flock of birds... I loved watching them from the rooftops and rooftop restaurants. There are guys who stand on the roofs too and whistle to them and swing a rope with a flag on it to talk to them, and sometimes the flocks land on their roofs for a while. They are beautiful when they land, they flake off sort of like a steep sandy hill crumbling down while still circling. I like it when people talk with animals. Our camel guide had a whole language of sounds...
• The Taj Mahal, I was surprised to find, is pretty awesome. It really occupies some space, like, it's really there. Was definitely worth spending an afternoon at
• Train friends! We shared a berth with a really sweet family on the way to Agra and I played word games and tic-tac-toe with the 10-year old boy (who was extremely hospitable, and was the leader in outgoing sociability) and 7-year old girl. And then when they were all asleep Grandpa (Dadi) shared his seat with me and asked me to teach him to meditate and we had a really nice connection. We exchanged numbers and would have been able to hang out with them more in Jaiselmer if we had made it here earlier, but I'm pretty sure they've left by now. Between Agra and Jodhpur the train was almost empty except for us and a boisterous band of young men (also on their way to Jaiselmer) who I spent a few hours making animal noises and being boisterous with. They thought Jaiselmer was boring, I think because there were no prostitutes, and left, but they still call me every day making funny noises. Not really to me over the phone, just to the world with the phone there. The phone is an excuse to exercise their native tongue.
• Oh, it's dinner time.
• Tomorrow we start our journey home, training all the way to Delhi, where we have 24 hours, and flying to London where we have a night, then to Minneapolis where we have 8 hours, and then to home where the heart is.

Wishing you solstice smiles and Jesus light

xoxo

Noa