Bundi

What to say today, Bundi's a great place, perhaps the most inherantly good place I've been so far. It's a small town with amazingly friendly and honest people. The tourist ratio here is just right; it's enough of a tourist attraction that people are not surprised to see me, but there is not a separate economy in town for tourists. People are glad I'm here because they want their town to be more touristed, and also they are just nice. The town is one of the laziest places in the world--people are laid back and take it easy, and sleep all through the hot part of the day. It makes me feel like I'm on vacation, which in some sense I am. Am I? What are my real intentions here?

Tonight I'm going to dinner at the house of a friendly couple of guys--they run a corner store and an art buisness, one of them is a painter of traditional miniature paintings. I'm kind of interested in them because they might be a couple, in which case they would be the first openly gay Indians I have met, besides the transvestite beggars on the train. In the morning I'm going to have tea with a schoolteacher and his wife (also a teacher, not a housewife!); they invited me to the marrage of their brother tonight, but I had already committed to the other dinner and I don't have wedding clothes.

I just found out that the busses from here to Jodhpur (my next stop) leave at 6,7,and 8 in the morning, so I think I'm going to stay another full day and leave wednesday morning for a hot ten hour busride.

This morning I explored the old fort that dominates the town; it's sort of abandoned and decaying, but increadibly intricate architecturally and there are some well preserved frescoes on the wall that are very beautiful. It's got a gothic feel to it, and it holds so many secrets, so much history, so much death and love within it's walls. I don't think I've been in a building with so much personality in it. What kipling said is right (to remind you: a place men build in uneasy dreams, more the work of goblins than of men). There are many thousands of rooms I didn't go into--many of them were too dark and dirty and scary. Oh, I also visited Kipling's house here, and reminded myself that although he criticized british colonilism, he was very much a colonial, with a big British style house and he had lots of Indian servants and things. But he was a good writer. I started reading Kim, maybe his best book.

I think that's what I have to say today.
best
jed