Selling sweets for Diwali
Ganges River: Doing laundry
The Taj Mahal was built in the late 1600s, and is
But beware of showing interest in an item!
the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal, the favoured wife of
Shopkeepers will pounce immediately and try to
Shah Jahan. Made of marble with intricate inlay
negotiate a price with you. This can be either fun
of precious and semi-precious stones, perfectly
or off-putting. Touts also abound on the streets,
symmetrical,
looking to be
and huge, it took
while
The food was diverse and delicious; helpful,
twenty-two years
leading you
we enjoyed meat curries, vegetable
to build and is a
straight into the
tribute to true love.
curries, rice, naan bread, and paneer hands of their
Diwali, the
‘uncle’ who
Festival of Lights,
sells carpets!
was celebrated while we were there. One important
The food was diverse and delicious; we enjoyed
Diwali tradition is to buy sweets for the family. The meat curries, vegetable curries, rice, naan bread,
streets, adorned with strings of colourful lights,
and paneer. My personal favourite was palak
were filled with stalls selling boxes of confections.
paneer—a vegetarian dish kind of like a creamed
They are all very sweet and sticky! Jalebi is like a
spinach with fried paneer. It may not sound
deep-fried funnel cake and gulab is like a dumpling appealing, but it was excellent—and healthy, too!
soaked in a sweet syrup. Delicious! Another
Nothing was too spicy (we were often asked what
important (and loud)
heat level we wanted). We were
tradition is lighting
careful with our diets, and
firecrackers. At one
point, we thought
perhaps there was a
gun range close by!
Shopping is a
challenge, but it
was fun to poke
into shops. Markets
are chaotic and
mesmerizing.
36 | arta.net
On a highway in Rajasthan, a northern state