Busy weeks!
After the initial heavy rains we have had the occasional drips but nothing substantial anymore; I have sown the first seeds -following a new method I have read about, "Square Foot Gardening"- and now I am eagerly awaiting the moment when I can actually transplant the little plants into the garden...
However, the chickens have grown to the point where we dare to let them out in the open (no fear of cats anymore) and as it turns out chickens LOVE everything small and green. They have eaten all the flowers from the pots, all the new little leaves on bushes and have grazed their way through half the spinach in the vegetable garden before we managed to stop them. That means another busy couple of weekends for T, as now we'll need a fence...

But the highlight of the past weeks was the visit of T's children who came over for part of their holidays. It was the first time they came to India, and we were excited to have them! We visited Jaipur which is really beautiful, and worth another visit. They especialy liked the Monkey Temple, which is on a hill overlooking Jaipur, where monkeys gather at sunset. We went with a bag of peanuts and obviously were favourite with the monkeys and an occasional child.
We also loved the Amber fort, which lies at the bottom of a mountain. It is 600 years old and still in a wonderful condition, made of sandstone and marble, featuring beautiful details like rooms with mirror-inlays on the ceiling and beautiful fresco's at the entrance gate. We didn't take a ride on Elephant back though, as the elephants seem to suffer a lot from marching up and down the hill in the hot Rajasthan sun. (We found Rajasthan to be cooler than Delhi though...it is higher and seems to cool considerbaly at night).

Agra, and the Taj Mahal, we unfortunately had to skip as the whole family caught Delhi Belly at some point...we have decided to keep that one in store for a next visit. Instead we went sightseeing in Delhi - the picture was taken at Humayun's Tomb, one of Delhi's most beautiful buildings (and very similar to the Taj Mahal; same layput but different stone).

Now, the kids are back to Holland where school will soon start, and we are back to normal life....trying to shed the xtra accumulated kilo's, building fences for the chickens and looking forward to cooler weather!