How The Other .00000001 Percent Live

I won't bother telling you about the 17th century palace we're staying in, or how last night we were driven in a fleet of cars out to the desert where dozens of children bearing torches and men playing horns and drums led us in a procession to the camels harnessed to velvet-tented many-cushioned carriages, or how the camels carried us to the top of a torchlit hill, or the bagpipers and whirling dancers and sitar players that met us there, or the lambs roasting on spits, or the tables set with china and crystal, or the floodlit castles atop the mountains that rose all around us against the star-filled sky. I won't bother telling you about playing polo on elephants the night before that--yes, Tom scored a goal!--and I won't tell you about the banquet in the torchlit 15th century moghul garden and the fountains and the marble pathway lined by geometric patterns of rose petals and marigold petals, and I won't tell you about the formal gala tonight, the birthday celebration itself, and the greatest firework show I have ever seen, and the birthday boy's name bursting out in letters of fire on the mountainside across from the palace, and I won't tell you how I walked down into the village before dinner and ended up playing cricket with the locals on the cobble-stoned main street--yes, Tom actually hit the ball with the funny flat-ended bat! I won't tell you about any of it, because how could you possibly believe it?

The internet is slow here, so only one picture tonight, but more promised as soon as I get back to broadband.