Mary Bellamy

Ah Delhi belly. We did not make it out of Mount Abu as planned, but spent another night there instead. It wasn't Beau this time - it was me. I started feeling unwell after a mildly strenuous sunset hike on Thursday. It went downhill rapidly.

Any doubts I might have had about marrying Beau vanished overnight. Specifically, around the time we realized that I was very sick and there was no electricity in our room. Beau was using the iPod and cellphone to try to illuminate the room and figure out what the problem was with the switches. As I recall, around this time I came crawling out of the bathroom, went through his legs and headed on my hands and knees for the trashcan under the sink.

For the record, I have not thrown up since moving to Alaska at the beginning of 2003. I have had food poisoning in that time. I do not throw up. Usually. Beau found me a bucket and used the cellphone light to check the level as my illness progressed. With all food throughly vacated from my digestive tract, I spent the next 18 hours in bed. Not necessarily sleeping. Beau went to the store for fresh lemon juice, salted biscuits and paracetamol, and also rearranged our bus tickets and extended our hotel stay.

To add to the fun, I capped off 24 hours of no sleep and sickness with an 11:30 p.m. cellphone job interview. I can only hope I managed to come off somewhat coherent and professional.

We made our bus on Friday and reached Jodhpur. I'm already less than enthralled with this very noisy and polluted city. On the bright side, we waked through the main bazaar to get to dinner yesterday, and I kept saying, "Ooh! Pretty! Pretty!" I must resist the urge to buy lots of shiny things here. (Unlike Beau, who bought an electric sitar on New Year's Day.)

Today we are going to the Mehrangarh Fort for some exploring, then are going to do a 2-hour zipline tour from the top of the fort all the way back into town. I suspect it will be less terror-inducing than the bungee jumping in New Zealand was