Gwen celebrated her 22nd birthday on the 4th of December... Considering we are broke, it ended up being quite an eventful and memorable celebration...
Firstly, the scary Dharamsala guys (they told Gwen that they "have special feelings" for her - even though they were married with 3 kids! eeeeeeek!) had given me cards to pass on to her for her birthday. I guess this wasn't all that amusing except for them spelling her name "Quince"...
Secondly, in the afternoon, our driver Saleem bought a cake for Gwenny... Again not all that funny until he stuffed a huge chunk of it in her face. I laughed my head off which was a bad idea as I was then forced into joining the festivities by having cake shoved in my face also!
The next night in Pushkar, we decided to have a proper party because some of out (up until then - but read on!) platonic friends, from Dharamsala were also coming to Pushkar and had organized for them to meet us in our hotel to celebrate.
They arrived around 8pm and so we went downstairs tp their room ready to party... A few minutes later Javid (one of the guys...), walks into the room a little agitated and says that our driver was absuing him for following us to pushkar (that had been in Jaipur with us the night before also but were doing the same route as us around Rajasthan)... Firstly, Gwen and I felt like we were being babysat by our driver which was irritating and we were also perplexed as to how he knew that these guys were our friends... All of a sudden, this huge fight errupted outside with all of the hotel dtaff against our friends and because they were all arguing in Hindi we presumed that they were fighting over us... Our driver had said in English that because they were Kashmiri that they were possibly terrorists wanting to blow us up... After heaps or arguing our friends stomp back into the room and start packing up their stuff while muttering abuse under their breathe... They then apologized and said that they could not stay any longer in this rotten hotel... By this stage Gwen and I were really upset - Happy Birthday Gwen!!! So we went to sook in our room for a while trying to calm down before going to complain about the disgusting way in which our friends had been treated... We wander downstairs ready for a fight, when our driver comes out of our friend's room, arm in arm, laughing with Javid... We are obviously confused so Saleem takes us aside and explains what had happened - In fact all he asked them was to see the ID cards to make sure that they were from the Indian Kashmir and not the Pakistani side and because they refused at first it got nasty...
So after this, funnily enough, our friends became best buddies with our driver and all the other hotel staff (Man! Men really are from Mars!) and we all went to have dinner together... At this stage it was late which made it hard to find an open restaurant in the area. We drove around for agesand ended up having to settle for a little roadside dhaba as it was the only thing open. After about a half hour ofsitting there, the guys were all drunk and chatting in Hindi so Gwen and I were pretty bored and a little tipsy...
After a while we decided we needed to go and answer nature's call and without thinking, we jumpet up laughing and ran down the road into the dark to look for a bush. When we got back, our driver told us he was so worried about us because there are heaps of cobras in the area... We had a little giggle at the thought of having a cobra bite us on the bum while pissing!
Now, I have left the best thing for last of course! One of the Kashmiri blokes Munna, had bought Gwen a present. He told her not to open it until later but when the fight errupted and we thought they had left, we decided to take a look - It was this revolting plastic statue (see photo above!) of this couple kissing on a bench and above it was written "My Future Lies With You." Not knowing what to think, we pretended not to have seen it... Later on when Munna was drunk and we had decided to waddle off to bad (me leading the way and Gwen laggin behind...) I get ready for bed and can hear some loud talking in the corridor... Anyways Gwen comes in 10 minutes later laughing her head off... In fact Munna had told her that he likes her a lot (Now the present makes sense!) and that she can stay in India and marry him - When Gwen pointed out that she actually has a boyfriend he just laughed and said in his hilarious stong accented broken english "Quince, just forget Australia, forget your boyfriend... He doesn't matter anymore... And money, you know, this is no problem - Just forget ok?."
Well... We can't all say that we have had a marriage proposal for our birthdays can we!
Happy Birthday Gwen!
x
c
