GapBreak volunteers celebrate Navarathri: the Indian festival of worship and dance

We are now at the end of our 9th week in Udaipur, which means only 3 left to go in India! We have been very busy in the past few weeks. The Monsoon season is officially over now and it ended very suddenly. One day the rain just decided to stop and ever since, we’ve had perfect, blue sky days… every day. So needless to say, we’ve been back to the roof top pool at Udai Kothi again which is such a treat.

We went bowling at the local shopping centre which was a lot of fun. We attracted a crowd of Indians who were all watching the games eagerly and were cheering for us. After the game we all let our inner child run free when we found some dodgem cars as well!

The next day we visited the City Palace which is huge – and looks over the whole city of Udaipur. It was so majestic and amazing to think that royals once lived there. We also took a cable car up to another look out point over the city and then had drinks at the Sunset Terrace.

Because of the preparations taking place for Diwali (India’s largest festival) in 2 weeks time, we’ve been having numerous power shortages. Every morning from 7:30 to 9 the power goes which makes trying to sleep very hot and restless. The internet has also been on and off (mostly off) for the past 2 weeks, which makes life very frustrating some times. On a more positive note, this week we celebrated Navarathri , which is a festival of worship and dance. There have been huge roofs of tinsel set up all over town because at night time the locals celebrate by dancing. They use ‘clapping sticks’ to perform the dance and we were lucky enough to be able to join in one night! Not many tourists can say they were invited to join in and actually dance in a festival – so we were extremely grateful and very lucky. It was such a fun night, we learnt the moves at home first, and then wandered down to the festival, where we joined in and danced with the locals. It was defiantly one of the highlights of the trip so far.

The next day we drove and hour and a half away to visit one of Asia’s largest lakes called Rajasmand Lake where we had a picnic. We then did a quick boat tour of the 90km lake, which was so beautiful and serene. That night Lauren and Sophie cooked a delicious dinner of peanut masala followed by peanut butter slice, which we ate on the roof by candle light, which was beautiful!

Teaching is going great and we are all making great progress with our kids, at school, day care, and the orphanage. They are so much fun to be around and we love them all so much!

Until next time, Carla, GapBreak Volunteer India Are you interested in volunteering in India? What about teaching English overseas, or simply looking for gap year ideas? Antipodeans Abroad specialises in unique volunteer travel experience. Find out more info here.