5. Christmas itself!

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Christmas in Rajasthan

Christmas Eve

Christmas eve began with yoga and then a foray into the village to look for secret santa gifts - we all decided upon a cap of 200 Rupees (just over £2) each and drew names out of a hat as to whom you would be giving a gift .... secretly. The joy of Bijaipur is that the village is not set up for tourists so all the things for sale are for the local people and it is often the children who have learnt English at school that take charge of the negotiations on prices within the shops! We had so much fun talking to the people in village looking at what they sold within their shops and trying to hide from each other so that we would not be caught by our donee!!

In the evening we enjoyed dancing whilst we sat by the fire having a drink.  We learnt that traditionally when dancing to outsiders the dancer would often be in fact a young man to protect the women and as his face was covered we were none the wiser by the end!



The celebrations continued over supper during which two Father Christmas's arrived - both with umbrellas. Was this a reflection of many of the gods carrying sun parasols .... so why was one open and one closed? And why were there two of them??

             

No wiser ... but they were consistent .... the cake followed again with a duet of Father Christmas



Christmas morning began with 7am yoga and then an 8am walk with JP!

Christmas Day






 




  After a good walk we had a lovely lunch and bubbles by the pool!





We opened our secret santas in the evening and someone (who had talked very excitedly about going to the tiger reserve at the end of their trip here) got their very own tiger, made in China (obviously!!) ...... who knew?













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