Update

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Sorry its been a while but we seem to find ourselves doing so much that it is hard to discipline ourselves enough to sit down in an internet cafe and let you all know what we've been getting up to. Its not just the blog that has been suffering, i haven't written in my journal for well over a week.

Anyway apologies aside i can fill you in on our latest escapades:

Following Agra we returned to Varanasi for the Holi Festival which turned out to be absolute madness. Loaded with coloured powder which you add to water and james bondesque water pistols a couple of days before we thought we would be ready to face what the city had to offer, we were of course very wrong:

we got woken up on Holi by the guesthouse owner who was already drunk rubbing coloured paint on our faces. As we left our room we were bombarded by a mixture of coloured water bombs and jets of coloured water, within seconds we were drenched and looking like a rainbow. It appeared that all the kids in the neighbouring houses were experts when it came to fighting at Holi and due to the positioning of the houses, so close to each other with open top roofs, the sky was a battleground wrought with coloured bullets. This continued for a number of hours with gun showers and a bucket of coloured water dropped directly above me by a tiny little girl with the cheekiest smile i have ever seen. Exhausted and unrecognisable we sat down to chai and a special breakfast prepared by the family of the guesthouse.

We then proceeded to go outside, something strictly advised against for women and we could see why. The streets were full of extremely drunk indians not used to the toxifying effects of alcohol and unable to control themselves (not too dissimilar from a saturday night in the UK). There was colour going everywhere and how i would have loved to photograph it but didn't dare in fear of ruining my camera. It all got a bit intense when i was jumped upon and my shirt ripped from my back but apparently its all in the nature of Holi. Suprisingly there are no police for the twelve hours of this festival and only after this time a huge siren goes off and the police are reintroduced. Anyway covered in paint and needing to get clean for a train a couple of hours later i tried to have a shower only to find we had no water. In the end i compromised by bathing in the river where all the indians were also trying to get the colour out and ended up being thoroughly scrubbed by an indian man with soap and a strange powder that was supposed to help get the colour out, it didn't of course and we headed to Jaipur nice and colour stained.

This second trip to Varanasi also meant the meeting of a guru/sadhu/baba, a very holy man who lived isolated in a small hut constructed by himself on the beach on the far side of the ganges. We were introduced to him by a friend we met at our guesthouses and he proved to be such a kind and generous man devoid of any sort of materialism except a mobile phone which we found most amusing. We spent a number of days with him chatting, gaining wisdom and eating deliciously prepared homemade food. After a couple of days he decided he liked us and we were worthy enough to become students of Ganesh (the Indian elephat headed god and problem solver). He told us we needed a certain mala (type of beads attributed to Ganesh) and once we had these he would give us a mantra that we had to repeat daily. What i liked about him was the way he said he recognised Ganesh as a name and not really a God but used him merely as a means to achieving some sort of self discipline and understanding of the self. Admittedly we have not stuck by what we have said as we have no intention of soaking up some strange and foreign religion it was still an amazing experience to come face to face with such a holy man with such strong beliefs that are so starkly contrasted to anything you would find in England.

Anyway onto Jaipur and that brought with it food poisoning. Despite being sick a number of times i still made the effort to have a look at the gateway city to Rajasthan but to be honest it wasn't that interesting unless you want to buy tat which it is amazing for, but we however did not want tat. We did however visit a very nice monkey temple which was at the end of a steep climb up a hill and gave us a fantastic view of the "pink city" at sunset and allowed us to feed monkeys by hand who were suprisingly polite as they very gently took the nuts from our open palms.

From Jaipur we went to Pushkar a beautiful holy town around a lake tucked behind mountains. Its beauty and peaceful atmosphere encouraged us to stay here for a number of days which means now we have been forced to skip some of the places we were hoping to visit. It was here that we have realised that it is far better to stay in fewer places which you enjoy then attempting to see absolutely everywhere as we found first with Varanasi and now Pushkar.

We stayed in the Pink Floyd Hotel, a shrine to the British band filled with paintings and old memorabilia where all the rooms are named after Pink Floyd albums. Here we met a number of people but most notably a Bavarian who liked to be called cannibal or barbarian and he looked just like that with a completely shaved head bar some dreads at the back, no shirt, scars on his chest which he had had cut, strange piercings, huge plugs in his ears and multiple tatoos. He really looked like the cliche picture of a german barbarian. He was however unbelievably nice, suprisingly so and we learnt he spent alot of time in India as he ran a jewellery business back home and he came to India to buy the teeth, beads and bones he used for his necklaces and sell them on for far more.

The highlight in Pushkar had to be hiring motorcycles and just adventuring off through the mountains. Free to explore anywhere we wanted we ventured off for miles with nothing but the idyllic landscape before us. Along the way we came through a number of very simple villages where the people were only to happy to smile and greet us or simply let us enjoy a cup of chai. The freedom we felt as the cool wind passed through our hair was unsurpassable. We did however have a very near scratch with death as we drove past a sort of mine and we mistook peoples warnings as friendly greetings, the result was an explosion at the side of the mountain followed by a hailstorm of rocks some rather larger then a football, driving through this shower was not too dissimilar to something you would see in an India Jones movie. Luckily none of us were hurt and managed to laugh as the adrenaline pumped through us for a number of minutes.

We also went on a camel desert safari, well desert is perhaps not the best word to use as Pushkar is not exactly a desert but we met up with a friend who Paul knows from Portugal by complete coincidence and subsequently i happened to have met the couple of times i have been to Portugal and they were keen to go as they hadn't been to Jaisalmer, the only place where there really is a desert and didn't want to miss out on travelling by camel. Anyway lack of desert aside it was very fun and ended with us sleeping on the rooftop of a farm under the stars and treated to lots of singing and dancing by the friends and families that had congregated with us for the evening as well as a couple of cheeky beers (alcohol is illegal in Pushkar as it is holy).

After four days in this peaceful town we moved on to Udaipur where we are currently, on a sleeper bus which was an experience in itself as we had a modest bed above normal bus seats which though comfy was hard to sleep on as the bus was moving around so much from the bumpiness of the poorly made roads.

Udaipur has been nice with a number of palaces but the main attraction being the beautiful lake palace that stands in the middle of the vast lake that Udaipur surrounds. This is now a luxury hotel that was used in the Bond movie 'Octopussy' along with a number of other places in Udaipur. We took a pedalow out and had a nice trip round the lake and gazed in awe at the lucky people enjoying cocktails and a perfect swimming pool from the confines of the palace hotel. We then stopped at what looked a bit like a pirate ship moored to a platform and pulled up alongside it and went exploring before being told off after a couple of minutes by some angry indians that it was not allowed. We later learnt that it was the boat used in the Bond movie which was rather amusing especially as we had no idea at the time. In the evening we watched yet another beautiful sunset on a rooftop restaurant before watching octopussy which is showed every night in hotels and restaurants around Udaipur and it was funny to see all the palaces which we had visited only hours before, including the boat 😊

Our stay here though is a short one and tonight we make the long journey to Jaisalmer, our last stop before Delhi and as i said we have had to miss out a large part of Rajasthan but after a while you realise that Temples and Palaces are nice but in essence India is the same and when you find a place with a nice vibe and where everyone seems happy then you should just stay there as soaking up the atmosphere is far more interesting and rewarding and above all allows you to learn more then any sight could.

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Photos

Holi Moli
After effects of Holi

Aftermath
No one in the guesthouse got away clean

Armed and Dangerous
In the midst of the Battle

Monkeying Around
Feeding Monkeys at monkey temple, Jaipur

Monkey Business
More feeding of monkeys

Pink Floyd Hotel
THe best hotel ever

Mountain View
Beautiful view of surrounding mountains of Pushkar whilst exploring on motorbikes

Biker Boyz
Enjoying the wind in my hair

Best of Friends
With my trusted Camel

Sunset at Lake Pichola Palace
THe luxury Hotel used in 'Octopussy'

On the Pirate Ship
Messing around unaware that e were on a movie relic

Sleeper
The very 'spacious' cabin of our sleeper bus