Moonlight Mafia, Khetri Fort, October 2009: part 2

My most surreal / memorable travel experiences: #8 See full map

Pilani and its surroundings are scorchingly hot during the day, but the desert quickly gives back its heat when the sun goes down. The night was becoming quite cool. Wearing a borrowed hooded sweatshirt cinched tight around my head, I laid flat on my back on the cold stone roof, watching the sky. The lateness of the hour and unfamiliar surroundings amplified the weirdness of it all. I could hear students milling around me talking, and eventually sufficient momentum built up for - of all things - a game of mafia. As cultural experiences go, I wasn't quite sure how this late-night staple of school retreats would translate.

And it was exactly as you would expect the game to be, anywhere in America. (Those with loftier sociological aspirations can comment on how globalization is standardizing even the games of the world's youth.) This was classic mafia, replete with reckless gambits, ludicrous strategizing, impassioned pleas, endless post-mortems. I was suddenly quite awake, watching the students with their easy rapport as we fell into stereotypical roles - the intense, silent observers, the shrinking novices who always get railroaded, the guy who doesn't quite understand the rules or the implications of what he says and consequently makes utterly inexplicable moves - it was all there.

After a few iterations the game died down, and students wandered off in various groups, the fort once again falling quiet. Some dozed, others hunkered down against the cold and waited for the sun. In the pre-dawn hours we roamed the fort languidly, eating what remained of the food, with people on various levels above and below silhouetted against a lightening sky. When morning broke we made our way down, watched disinterestedly by several monkeys that were perched high up on the walls of the fort.

When traveling, I've found it often pays to say yes in implausible situations. In a countdown of travel experiences this is surely one of the more unique ones - playing intense games of mafia at three in the morning on the roof of an abandoned 300-year old Rajasthani palace with a group of near-total strangers under a beautiful, star-dusted sky: check.

The view from the fort as dawn breaks

Standing on the roof

Next: a midnight ride to Oxford