Panther paw prints & bear poo

---

Following on from the excitement of the desert theatre puppet show we made our way to Mt. Abu - the Blackpool of Rajasthan and the state's only hill station. Resplendent with tourist tat and more ice cream than you could ever eat, even the vile, putrid smelling green lake helped complete the illusion. It also is the proud owner of its polo field, although it is only used once a year for horse polo and once for camel polo (I think they must have better behaved camels than Jonny and Hoodu).

The main highlight of Mt. Abu is the magnificent Dewala Jain temples (reputed to be the most intricate in the world), weird rock formation and Trevor the crocodile. Well, we assumed he was called Trevor as he was the only living thing to be found in 'Trevor's Tank' either that or 'Trevor' made a very tasty lunch...

After watching him sunbath for a while, however, the question did arise 'How does a crocodile end up in a lake 1400m above sea level, with no river system and apparently without being placed there?'

I also got a lot closer to nature on a 5hr guided tour up and down the mountains and through forests. Unfortunately the sum total of the wildlife spotted was one panther paw print and a pile of black bear poo - very exciting.

Mt Abu was also our first experiment with the Indian postal service. The system is, like all of India, quite Incredible.

First in order to post a parcel must be correctly sealed and sewed up in the correct fabric (they will refuse it if it is the wrong shade of white!). Obviously to have this done you must find a parcel wallah (or in our case bloke with white sheet and sewing machine). Only once the parcel is correctly stitched will the post office actually talk to you - and explain the previous process. This doesn't sound too bad, however, we did manage to find the only parcel wallah in town who, despite his confidence, had never actually done this before. A full hour and 20 minutes passed in which he emptied and repacked our box 4, 5 (maybe more) times trying to make it look like it was necessary and not just an excuse to charge us more at the end. This proceeded to the stitching, which again had to be done more than once and in the end, spectacularly badly. After our ordeal with him we made it to the post office to be told that unfortunately we can't send your parcel as the UK doesn't exist.

'em, sorry' came our rather perplexed reply.
'No, UK. You want UAE'
'Err, no. Could you try England, Scotland .... Wales even'
'No they not here either'
'Ah'

After some shuffling we got to see the computer and buried at the bottom of the list was 'Great Britain'

'Ah that will do'
'But that's not in UK'
'Em, that will do anyway thanks'
'Sure, because it's not in UK, Great Britain different place'
'I'm sure it will do, thanks'

Look out folks, it could be anywhere, but with any luck it might get home before we do.

Ahmedabad

Our journey progressed further south to the once powerful city of Ahmedabad, a place that looks modern on the outside but has attitudes from the stone age. So far it's the only place in India to make us feel truly uncomfortable. The local men think nothing of staring constantly where they shouldn't and regard westerners, especially women, with a strange disdain that we couldn't escape. Even with Gandhi-ji's Ashram from where he conducted the great Salt March and effectively ended British rule in India the harassment continued (that's how bad it was). It left us with thoughts that would have left Gandhi very upset.

Suffice to say we left as soon as we could to the breath of fresh air (ish) that is the new India - Mumbai.

---

Photos

Toad Rock
How does this look like a toad? - answers on a postcard please.

Squirrels
The only thing I took a picture of in Ahmedabad - it really was that good!