Let's Go Fly a Kite

Kite flying in India is a popular pastime, but nowhere more so than Jaipur. In the late afternoon sky one can see hundreds of kites flying all around, and in the rest of the day one can see thousands of kites stuck in trees and powerlines where they have been cut and fallen.

The kite festival is on January 14, and everyone tries to cut one another kite. The string is actually made of glass, and it is desirable in competition to some sliding up someone else’s kite and cut their string with your own, thus emerging victorious until such time as your own kite might be cut be someone else’s.

The kites are as light as air themselves, made of tissue paper connected to two thin pieces of bamboo. One of the wood pieces is straight, with the other curved gracefully side to side.

The most wonderful thing in the world is to sit at a rooftop bar, sipping gins and tonic, with a few olives, watching the hotel staff fly kites as happily as small boys, maybe having a go yourselves, and then watching the sun go down just as the Muslim call to prayer sounds and a local wedding gets under way with loud drums leading the dancing procession along the streets below.