We finally made it to the north only to find ourselves stuck in the first city we've come to. Udaipur is a gorgeous, friendly place. Set on a lake, it's a hilly white city full of old palaces and temples, roof-top restaurants and narrow winding alleys. Some of "Octopussy" was filmed here and about half the guesthouses in town have a permanently painted sign out front offering "Octopussy Show Free! Every Night 7 PM." The vibe in the Old City where we are staying is very small-town and nearly everyone I meet is either related to or friends with someone else I've met. It's the first place I've stayed long enough to really get to know people who live here and that's making it that much harder to leave.

Our first day here, I met Mark, an Irish guy who invited Chris and me to meet him that night for dinner at his friend Pinto's restaurant. After dinner, Mark and Chris followed Pinto to Pushkar Palace, his friends' guesthouse down the road, for drinks and hanging out. I went home to sleep but was awakened the next morning by a very psyched Chris who had met and really liked the guys at Pushkar Palace. We went there for breakfast where I met Kirti, his brother Guddu and their friend Manu as well as two Isreali brothers, an Isreali woman named Dikla, and Daryl, an Australian guy who's been coming to Pushkar Palace for eight years. We decided to move. I'm so glad we did. We've found good friends, a comfortable place, and a few more reasons to love India.

And now more on Holi. Holi is India's festival of colors and the start of the hot season. The festival started Saturday night with a giant puppet-shaped bonfire in the town center (plus dozens of smaller ones in the side alleys). Clearing all the dried leaves and branches left through the winter, the fires make way for spring and metaphorically destroy evil. (This all reminded me a bit of Burning Man.)

We started watching the burn from the top steps of a temple, but soon the lure of loud Hindi pop dance music and a swarming mass of drunk dancing Indian men sprinkling each other with paint powder became too much for Chris to bear and he bolted down into it, arms waving madly with a big grin on his face and paint all over his bald head and clothes. We later learned he was on the local news.

The next morning we awoke early to trance music and people yelling and talking in the guesthouse courtyard just below our room. I got dressed and ran down into it and within seconds was covered from head to toe in pink, yellow, green, blue, orange and purple powder paint. We danced and laughed and played with paint for a while longer before Chris and I decided to take to the streets. Yelling "Happy Holi!" men and boys descended upon us smearing us with paint and dousing us with water, transforming us both into bright smeary runny watercolors.

Someone told me that on some festival days, the god Shiva is believed to be sleeping and not keeping an eye on people's behavior. It should have come as no surprise then that within minutes of going out, I was being grabbed from all directions by a thickening group of boys following us down the street. After a chastising outburst, I quickly made my exit to a the rooftop of Minerwa Guesthouse with the Israelis for some more trance and beer in the sun for the rest of the day. The next morning I discovered a large bruise on my right breast where someone had grabbed me and a huge smear of green paint on my back leftover from someone who used the wrong kind of paint. My hair still has tinges of pink.

My first glimpses of the culture and people here in the northern state of Rajasthan have made me feel this could be India at it's magical and colorful best. I'm not sure when we'll move on from Udaipur but it's getting hotter by the day and the mountains are beginning to call. At the same time, it feels really good to be getting to know a place, creating friendships and developing second-home feelings that make it that much harder to leave.

Today is the first cricket game in a series between India and Pakistan. They haven't played each other for 14 years and these games are doing wonders to raise hopes for peace between the two countries. The usual midday powercuts are mysteriously absent today and everyone is glued to a television. Go India!