In heaven...with cobras

3/7
Another day of inactivity followed the first. This time the excitement of the day was a 20 minutes football game following a 15 minute ride of terror on the back of a motorcycle through the sand. How do the two relate, you ask? Well you see, the football required a trip into the central part of Gagadi to get blown up and went along on that trip, not for the futbol or for the chance to ride on the terrifying back-of-motorcycle ride through the sand, but for the only 3 pieces of fruit within a 30 mile radius. We get great food here, but virtually nothing fresh and no fruit. We saw a giant spider I thought looked like a brown recluse (special interest to Ann) and either a rat snake or cobra...all right in our lving quarters which we have dubbed the gravvi fort (insert french accent). The evening featured a power outage and thus especially dark meal and another hour staring up into the stars and Dillan playing mandolin for entertainment.
Today was our first day of activity and it involved going to a nearby town to host rally for International Women’s day. We had glued signs and tied sticks to that morning and the night before and now we took them with us on the march through town. This was followed by several speeches including an impromptu one by Sarah after they told us one of us must speak on the occasion relating to women’s rights. We got see the GRAVIS run hospital for lunch before heading back.
Perhaps even more memorable than this rally and the over-filled jeep ride home was the morning run. We have determined to make this our new habit and thus I woke up at 6:00 to run through the silent desert while the sun rose over the horizon. Giri-ji insists that someone must go with us, so like the dogs that tag along, he runs loyally beside us the whole way. If I could continue to do this, it would be a new era of Dana actually choosing to rise early. Of course, it isn’t really by choice since the heat drives me to it.
As a special note to you all, these blogs will only appear once a week at the very most since it is only when we make the trip into jodhpur on Sundays that there is even the chance of internet access. Cell phone access is pretty sketchy too. We don’t get the Hindustan Times here, let alone imported copies of the The New York Times. It seems I may spend the next 6 weeks largely isolated from the world. Well it’s an experience let me say.

In heaven...with cobras

Jodhpur, India