The Big Trip

‘Oh no Miss Honey, it is closed.’ Our driver Jitu looked at me concerned. He had been doing such a great job taking care of me and my three best friends, we were all barely 18. I hoped he didn’t think we were upset.

‘My family actually is from Jaipur. My sister and her husband live near. Would you want to perhaps go there?’ Jitu asked us, eager to please, and we all loved the idea. Weaving through traffic we stared out the window at the pink city, but most of all, on this day, we gazed at the sky. It was the day of Jaipur’s Kite Festival. Thousands of gorgeous colorful kites filled the sky, twisting and turning and zipping around. It was beautiful.

Soon we arrived at Jitu’s sister’s home. The whole family was waiting for us on the street smiling and bowing. We were introduced to Divya and her husband, a police officer, and their four children. Their street was filled with long and narrow concrete homes all connected as one building with a flat grey roof. To our surprise, we were led straight to that roof up a bamboo ladder that we climbed nervously. On top it looked like a huge runway stretching out before us with kids and other families all playing, eating and flying their kites across it. The sky was a sea of colored diamonds, cartoon-like fish and bright fabric.

Our hosts rushed around passing chairs from downstairs up to the roof insisting we sit and get comfortable. Soon Divya appeared with spicy, delicious vegetable pakoras. Her eldest daughter followed with sweet sesame seed balls – the special food for the kite festival. Their hospitality was overwhelming and so genuine.

Soon the kids asked us to play. I was being swept away, pulled this way and that, asked questions in varying levels of English – it was magical, exciting, exhilarating. I felt like I was getting to peek into the real lives of Indian people, of this middle class family, into their whole culture.

I tried to savor it all, but eventually, like the end of all trips, it was time for us to go. We thanked the family over and over again as they bowed and nodded and smiled over and over again. It was a fight to see who could be most polite, but we could never have won.

We climbed back into our van as Jitu asked ‘Did you like that? Flying kites? I hope you had fun time.’ I couldn’t believe he had to ask, I liked it more than anything else we’d done. It felt like real travel, like adventure, like the true India. ‘I’ll really never forget it Jitu, I’ll never forget this day.’