The next day on our trip was a lot less eventful. I started it off by showering and eating breakfast, mango and eggs, before getting all of my things together so we could leave. We ended up staying later than expected because one of our trip leaders was meeting with a friend who lived in the area, and then when we were finally ready to leave we were stopped again by the owner of the hotel. She stopped all of us to talk to us and say that we were the best group they’ve ever had at the hotel, which was so nice! She even gave us all small presents, which were tiny handmade elephants. It was adorable!
Once we finally got on the bus, I slept for a while. I also began to write up a summary of my final project for the trip. I decided that I was going to report on the differences between the environment of mountain/rural life and city life in India, and how the population density affects how clean and environmentally friendly the area is.
In the middle of the bus ride, we stopped at a shady truck stop because we all had to go to the bathroom. It turned out that the only bathroom was one squat toilet with no toilet paper, but we all went with it. A few minutes after we got back onto the bus, we realized we were all hungry so we stopped at yet another truck stop and bought super random snack food to hold us over before we got to where we were staying for the night.
Once we finally arrived at the Neemrana Fort Palace, we all ate lunch, which was a delicious buffet, and then went back to our rooms to drop off our things. I then fell asleep for about 5 hours because I was so exhausted, and woke up completely disoriented. When I woke up I decided to explore the fort before dinner time, and it was a great choice. It was a beautiful fort that overlooked a city far away, and even had a pool and amphitheater within it. After I explored, I went back to the rooms and helped my friend Greer choose her favorite photos and edits to show to the group.
Once we were done we went to eat dinner, which was a buffet similar to lunch, and then went to a meeting with our group. At this meeting people began to present their final projects, but all of the people who presented were those with a photography focus for their on-assignment project. A few people showed us their amazing photos, but eventually we were all too hot and tired to continue so we decided to go to sleep.
We all went back to our rooms to sleep, but when I tried to go to the bathroom something weird happened. I went to turn the light off, but when I hit the switch it gave me a huge electrical shock! I’ll be honest, it terrified me, so I didn’t touch any of the light switches for the rest of the time that we were in Neemrana. Despite the fact that this hurt, it was still kind of funny and added something interesting to a mostly uneventful day. Even though we didn’t do much this day, though, I knew it was just because it was a transition day for us to get to Neemrana, because we had a super jam-packed day planned for tomorrow!
Even the blogs about your “uneventful” days are so interesting! I love the amount of detail you include in each post. You pictures are also so great, because they help add description to your pieces. I’ve loved looking at the pictures, because I do not have much background on India and its environment, and it helps create a picture of what you’re describing in my head.
I love how much detail you incorporate into your posts! Whether or not its intentional, the level of detail you’re providing persuades me to feel a sense of emotional attachment to the trip! And with your ending of the post you certainly added some anticipation for the next post, so I can definitively say i’ll be back!