Agencies
 
Jodhpur, Mar 10: White horses, elephants and priests blowing conch horns starred in the Hindu nuptials of actress Elizabeth Hurley, who wrapped up a week of lavish wedding celebrations in India on Friday.

Hurley, 41, her 42-year-old husband Indian businessman Arun Nayar and their 240 guests enjoyed the kind of pageantry once reserved for maharajahs as they shuttled between palaces and an ancient hilltop fort around the historic city of Jodhpur, in the desert state of Rajasthan.

Nayar trotted down the aisle on a white horse accompanied by caparisoned elephants and camels at the climax of the wedding on Friday evening, said staff involved in the nuptials.

Hurley, who has been staying at the grand, sandstone Umaid Bhawan Palace, sported elaborate henna tattoos after she and her female guests took part in a traditional mehendi ceremony.

Hurley and Nayar then went on Thursday to Nagaur Fort, about 130 km outside the city, for a musical ceremony that included qawwali, or devotional hymns performed by Sufi Muslims.

There was a wedding caravan involving 12 horses and 60 camel carts and fireworks in the evening, a Jodhpur newspaper reported.

Nayar wore a diamond-encrusted sherwani, which is a traditional Indian jacket, it added.

Desert cuisine

After a night's sleep in luxury tents, the party returned to Umaid Bhawan on Friday for the Hindu wedding where priests blew horns made out of conch shells and chanted Vedic mantras while the couple walked in circles around a sanctified fire.

They then headed to the city's massive Meherangarh Fort overlooking the blue-painted city to feast on Jodhpur's rich, buttery cuisine, accompanied by traditional Rajasthani singers and dancers and showers of flower petals.

The guests dined on obscure Indian cuisine from Rajasthan, including wheat dumplings mixed into a soup of savoury lentils and food wrapped in leaves and cooked by embers while buried in the earth.

Designer Rohit Bal said he had designed many of the clothes being worn by the couple, who have been partying non-stop since their civil marriage last week at a castle in England.

Their two-night stopover in Mumbai was immersed in controversy after authorities tore down part of a venue built to host the wedding party because it infringed on a popular beach.

At Nagaur Fort, police beat some curious local onlookers with sticks, according to witnesses.

But very few of the A-list celebrities touted in the media as potential guests had turned up early in Jodhpur.

Hurley split with actor Hugh Grant in 2000, ending a 13-year relationship that survived Grant's well-publicised encounter with a prostitute. In 2002, she had a son with US film producer Steve Bing, but brought the child up as a single mother.

She met Nayar, a jetset businessman and a friend of Bollywood film stars, shortly after her son was born. Hurley and Nayar had a civil wedding last week at an English castle.

Tom Ford, a designer and former director of the Gucci fashion house, and Janet Street-Porter, a British journalist, are some of the best-known guests. Bollywood actress Preity Zinta also had arrived on Thursday.

The celebrities, and the international press pack following them, have only bemused the residents of Jodhpur, most of whom are hearing about Hurley and Nayar for the first time.

"She is the oldest bride Jodhpur has ever seen", said Kastury Ghosh, a bridal shop manager, one of many residents struck by Hurley's age in a country where most women become wives in their early twenties.