What a small world

I am still spinning out about our past few days!

While in Jaiselmer, 80kms from the Pakistani border, and while admiring the marble work on the Jain temple inside the fort, I heard my name being called out and gasping for breath as a girl threw her arms around me. The crazy girl was our mate Lopa from NY and who we last saw in Japan 2 years ago showing me how to do the american bum dance against the bar while we drank margaritas. It was so crazy! The last time this happened to us was when we were in the Andes trekking around Mt Fitzroy when a hiker appeared out of nowhere who happened to be Dave's mate from England.

Lopa was heading the same direction as us towards Delhi so she joined us on our road trip in our little round ambassador car for the next few days. Lopa speaks hindi, as well as gujarati, and she loves food just as much as we do so we quickly got rid of our paranoia of eating from road stalls. We also got to talk some sense into our driver through Lopa about his efforts to steer us into the "best hotel" and the "best" carpet/paintings/jewellery stores (neverending despite being upfront with him from the start). Very interesting actually. He was honest about his aim to make an extra buck at any opportunity and that as foreigners, we have more money than he has so what was a few hundred rupees extra here or there? Luckily for us, his efforts were wasted.

We parted ways with Lopa this morning but will catch up with her during new years down south with a few bombay socialites she hopes to meet in tow.