3 days in the life of an Indian family

by Vincent

Visiting the "Temple of rats" with Morli and Sarender. This temple is inhabited by hundreds of rats. Nice when you know that you always have to remove your shoes when you enter in a Hindu temple...

Manisha prepared us a lot of delicious meals

A guy making "Paan" in the street. Not recommended!

The women of Morli's family

Berit trying a Saree. They wanted her to keep it!

Berit, not so sure how she will end up after an Indian haircut...

Oh my god, what's happening to me?

Morli's family preparing breakfast for us

A nice temple in Bikaner A lot of decorations!

Some rests of fakir instruments in the fort of Bikaner

Inside the fort of Bikaner

An old palace converted in a luxury hotel

Kind of vehicles you meet on the roads of India

Visiting a factory in Nokha, with the 2 boss

Instant of life in India: waiting for the train to leave Nokha in front of 25 people who are doing nothing else than watching you!

My father has a cousin that I've never met who lives in India a few months per year. Her name is Francoise but Indians know her under the name of Gurupriya. We would meet her later in Rishikesh. She had a friend with a family in Rajasthan and, since we were traveling in the region, she asked us if we would be interested to stay with them a couple of days. Interested by the idea of seeing Indian life from the inside, we accepted the proposition with enthusiasm and were ready to live a different experience.

The family was living in Nokha, a small town close to Bikaner, in the North of the Thar desert. There is no tourist attraction at all there so they don't see western people everyday. We arrived by train from Jaisalmer at 8pm and started to wait for someone of the family who was supposed to pick us up. After 15 minutes, there was still nobody and we had at least 20 people around us, starring at us, asking us questions and wondering if we had a problem: a western couple there, it was necessarily not normal. One guy even invited us to sleep at his place.

In fact, I had misunderstood the meeting time and nobody would come to take us because they were expecting us to arrive the next day! But after some calls, everything was arranged and we eventually met the family a few minutes later.

When we arrived at their house, a lot of people were waiting for us: all the family, plus the friends, the neighbors, etc. We said hello to everybody, shook hands and tried to remember names and family relations. It's actually quite hard to understand family relations because they all call each other "brother" or "sister". We were offered a delicious "Thali", and ate it on he floor with our hands, observed by the fascinated audience. Then we went to bed and were wondering what we would do the next 3 days...

Actually, Ramu, the friend of Francoise, had planned everything for us, remotely by phone from Rishikesh. The first day, we visited Nokha as well as all the others family members and friends we hadn't met the evening before. Every time, we were offered a "Chai", were taken in photo and always welcomed so well. "Guest is god", as they say in India, cannot be denied.

At one point, they took us to a beauty salon. The day before, we had met the two guys owning it. They had proposed us to cut our hair and we had answered politely "Maybe", for not saying "No", and thinking that we would never see them again. One of them started to invite Berit to seat. She didn't want to cut her hair but accepted to be nice. The guy, who couldn't stop saying "Ladies and Gents, Unisex!" (the only thing he knew in English), started to cut the hair of Berit in a teatrical and grotesque way in front of an impressed audience. It was the moment of his life. I think he had seen some american series on TV and tried to act the same. I had an interior laugh whereas Berit was wondering what was happening to her. I was also feeling quite lucky that they hadn't chosen me.

I was wrong. A few minutes later, the other guy asked me to follow him to another room. That was my turn. You can say "No" 10 times but it's just useless. He took me to a massage room so I started to think that I was more lucky than Berit: it's not so bad to have a massage after all, what can happen? I was imaginating a nice Ayurvedic massage. I was wrong again, it was a torture. I don't think that guy had ever made a massage before. He used a wooden instrument and pressed it strongly on all of my body. That was really painful but I didn't want to show it. Fortunately, it lasted just 5 minutes. After that, I said "Thank you" to him...

But it was not finished for me. I had an haircut as well, and then he shaved my beard! But it was not finished, not yet... Before I had the time to understand what was happening to me, I had my face covered with some layers of creams. I was having a facial treatment. Just the cucumbers slices were missing!

During that time, Berit had to refuse eyebrow trimming and arm waxing but she didn't manage to refuse the massage. She kept marks on her body for a week! We will remember a long time this visit to that beauty salon...

The next two days, we continued to visit places, sights and family members in Bikaner and Nokha. It was very tiring but very interesting as well. We shook others hands, drank others "Chai", refused others "Paan" (kind of sweets rolled in a leaf which was impossible to chew) and we have always been welcomed the most nicely way possible.

The family also insisted for visiting some friends of them owning a farm and a factory making electric cables. They were one of the richest family of Nokha. One more time, we have been received very well, made a visit of the factory, met the engineers and employees and took photos. It was a bit like being a president or a prime minister visiting a factory of his country. Except we were nobody and were dressed with our dirty and smelly traveling clothes!

At the end, we have a very good memory of these 3 days which were like nothing we had experienced before. We met some really nice people who were always offering us their smile, their good mood and their laughings. "Guest is god" cannot be more true than in India.