Nayabas

The town I went to last weekend in rural India was called Nayabas, in the state of Rajasthan. Two vanloads of us from work took off from New Delhi traveling East and South along a highway, and the towns and villages became smaller and smaller, as did the roads until we finally ran out of road and were driving on farmland paths.

None of us knew where Nayabas was and no map could tell you exactly how to get there so navigation was a bit more like sailing than driving. We'd try to keep an East-Southeast bearing, and as we got closer we would ask people if they knew of a road/path that would take us to Nayabas.

No one in the village had been told we were coming so there was an explosion of curiousity when the vans rolled up. After about 2 minutes of shyness, the kids wanted to start playing or having their pictures taken, and the grownups would invite us into their homes for tea or a smoke. Most of the homes were three-walls with a celing and a few of the buildings had a second story. There was also a central courtyard with about 10 buffalo for milk.

After dinner in one of the homes (and a wolf search that only turned up a few foxes), we slept on the front poarch of one of the houses under the stars. The villagers watched us fall asleep and were still there watching us when we woke up in the morning.

In the morning, the kids took us on a 10 minute walk past the town's wheat fields and we went swimming in the nearby river until a bunch of the buffalo showed up for their turn to wallow in the water.