Henna Happiness.

Henna is made from the crushed leaves of the Henna plant. It is a paste that stains your skin for about 3 weeks. Once applied to the skin, the longer it is left to dry, the darker the stain. It has been used to decorate skin for many centuries and is completely harmless.

Henna
Lawsonia inermis

Our driver Parveen wanted to take us to his friend's place in Jaipur to get our hands decorated with Henna. Even though the henna costed $13 per hand, it was definitely the best quality. It took half an hour to do the henna from my fingers to my elbow on 1 side. After the 19 year old girl finished my hand she told me to keep it still for an hour then she put oil on it. On the car trip back to our hotel we still had to keep our arm still to let it dry. When we got out of the car mum, Maisy and I scraped off the henna because the pattern had soaked into our skin. It looked amazing, mum's henna design definitely came out the best because she had the driest skin.

That night we went to Chowk Dhuni night bazaar. It was like a fair, there were tightrope walkers, puppet shows, magicians, elephant and camel rides, snake charmers, and also fortune tellers. Our family all had our palms read. See if you can guess which fortune belongs to which person.

·         Who is over confident, and has 3 years of hard work ahead of them?

·         Who is stubborn and will live a long life?

·         Who is anxious, but will always have good results?

·         Who is emotional, but will always have good luck?

Try and guess and send a comment back!

After we got our fortunes told we then saw a FREE henna place. So then the whole family got more henna patterns done. These old ladies were super-fast and did our legs from our ankles up to our calves in about 5 minutes. Maisy and I also got our hands done. Mum then signed her name on dads arm using the henna.

A few days later we met a rickshaw driver named Dilip, and dad asked if he could be our driver for the week. Dilip was a very friendly man, and he asked us if we wanted to meet his family. So we did. Dilip had a lovely family, they were so nice to us. One night the girls did henna on our feet and arms. A young girl did my arm, and one of the cousins is a professional henna lady and she did my feet.

After all this henna Maisy and I were loving it and we bought our own henna tubes.  That morning I tried the henna on myself and drew a peacock on my left wrist. So that afternoon whilst mum was asleep, dad let us do the henna on the soles of his feet. But he didn’t know what he was in for. The foot that Maisy did was covered in dots, scribbly lines and ’I Love M’. Where as I tried to do the normal henna by copying some of the henna designs that were already on my arms and legs. It was hard to do because dad’s feet are very ticklish and he kept moving them. Half an hour after we had finished the henna, it was time to scrape all the henna off to reveal the design that had soaked in. That was absolute torture for dad. I squeezed a mandarin segment over the henna so it would come off easily, and so all the henna’s colour would show.

At the same place Maisy and I bought our henna, mum bought henna for her hair. So while dad and Maisy watched TV, I helped mum dye her hair with henna. We first had to mix the henna powder with water and mix it until the powder dissolved. Then we had to wait 30 minutes for it to set and thicken.  Once it had thickened mum had to sacrifice a brush that was going to have henna all over it. We would then dip the small brush into the cup of henna and I would brush mum's hair.  She sat in the bathtub and it was a complete mess for a while. Mum didn't have many grey hairs to cover, Dad would probably have needed the henna more.

Henna comes in a tube like icing for a cake, but Maisy’s had no lid. You wouldn’t believe what happened next. Maisy started to jump from her bed to mine, and I just asked her where her henna was when she saw a big brown gooey blob on my pillow. It turns out that when she was jumping from bed to bed, she jumped on her pillow, and underneath her pillow was her henna. Which had splattered from 1 side of her single bed all the way across to my bed and all over  my nice white sheets. We then had to spend the next 30 minutes scrubbing our sheets, and that night I slept on a freezing wet bed!!!

The henna has been a great experience that I love. I hope I can buy it back in Australia! I hope Maisy doesn’t keep hers under her pillow.
Charlotte