Rajasthan tour

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Hello everyone - I hope you're all doing well,

Well, we are having an adventure round Rajasthan at the moment!! We have arranged to do a 12 day tour, with a driver taking us between places. The journeys have been long, but it is interesting to see the countryside and people going about their normal business. Rural life is in stark constrast to the desperate begging and squalor which seems to surround the main tourist sites. We are learning lots of interesting stuff from out driver, although there is the occasional comical language barrier - he has quite a strong accent and his brilliant joke about a big white sikh temple near Agra being the Taj Mahal fell a bit flat when we believed him, started oooing and aaaaahing, then realised he was joking and felt plain silly!! The Taj Mahal itself was beautiful and impressive but packed full of tourists. We ended up hiring a guide to skip the queue, massive due to it being closed for 5 hours that day for a V.I.P.

Today, we have arrived in Japiur and headed straight for the Amber palace, a really beautiful building just outside the city. The elephant ride up there was not exactly relaxing, but we made it to the top, despite a grumpy elephant which seemed determined to go the wrong direction.

It's late now and a man has laid down a mattress in the office where we are on the internet, so I think now might be the moment to zzzzzzzzz.

More soon.........

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