A birthday outing

Saturday being Jenny's birthday, we went into the next big town with a couple of friends. We visited several cloth shops to get Jenny some "birthday suits". The shopkeeper-to-customer work ratio is definitely the right way round: you sit on a comfy sofa and point at what you want to see, and the guy gets them out and unrolls them for you. Then if you don't want them, they do all the putting away. Also, since you take them to the tailor to get made for you, they're more-or-less guaranteed to fit you. Bonus!

Jenny (under the tablecloth (or chaddor)) at the cloth counter.

Trying on a dupatta.

About 1/20th of the selection in one of the half-dozen cloth shops we visited. I like the swirly one in the bottom row. It's a shame the men's fashions are so much drabber - you could make some cracking hawaiian shirts out of some of these...

A visit to the nut man. Nuts and dried fruit are good, but a lot of hard work: you have to remove all the stalks/stones/dust, wash them in a mild detergent solution, rinse, and finally bake them in the oven for 10 mins before they're safe to eat!

A view down one of the bazaar streets.

Our driver purchasing some freshly-cooked-in-its-husk-at-the-side-of-the-road corn.

As promised, a first half-decent pic of the painted trucks. Uphill they are pursued by an impatient queue of wannabe overtakers.

Trumpeter serenades the entry of the cake.

Chocolate-y traybake-y Pakistani-flag-y goodness. Yum.

Mehndi

Yesterday I went to my 2nd party here (I'm doing well I think). One of my colleagues had been invited to a friend's mehndi ceremony and she invited me to go with her. I had to raid the collection of outfits they have lying around here (because apparently it wouldn't do to wear cotton) and was advised to wear as much jewellery as I could get on!

The mehndi ceremony is a bit like a hen party to which the bride's entire extended family and just about everyone she's ever known is invited (men as well as women). Traditionally she wears yellow and green (to symbolise spring and fertility) and although the invite was for 6pm everyone knows that it doesn't start till 8. There was a band (complete with bagpipes) and after the bride had had hundreds of photos taken she was carried in a sedan chair to a bench at the front of the hall where she sat on display for the rest of the evening. Her relatives then danced forward with the mehndi (a type of henna body paint), women first then the men and after that all the bride's close female relatives took it in turns to go up to her and put some oil on her forehead, feed her some methai (pakistani sweet - delicious!) and paint mehndi on her hands.

The colours were incredible, the noise was terrific and I was definitely underdressed and under made-up for the event! Need to go shopping before the next one...

The height (and width) of fashion...