Rajasthan and Diu (Gujerat)

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Jodhpur
From Agra, where I'd developed a cold, I took what has to be the worst train trip ever to Jodphur. Quite apart from the fact that it was 2 hours late in Agra and delivered me 8.5hrs late to Jodpur, the sleeper carriage I was in was so rammed full I had to sleep on my big backpack on my bunk, the only ventilation were barred windows which did nothing to cut through the stifling heat of the carriage while we sat in the station for hours being slowly cooked by the sun. Babies were screaming, it was filthy dirty, insects and fleas jumped all around me and, more than occasionally, in my clothes and after we finally got moving providing some blessed air movement, the train then stopped after about half an hour for three hours for no apparent reason! So it was that after 12 hours in the flea infested, moving pressure cooker we had managed to travel a measly 150km and had arrived in Jaipur. This did provide some relief as a fair few people disembarked which, at least allowing me to disentangle myself from my back pack and deposit it under a seat. Unfortunately, however, this did not include the grizzling little kid who, until his mother took of its nappy and deposited on the seat adjacent to me and left it there, I thought was a boy! She continued to cry at will and run around the carriage for which, just for good measure, her parents decided to kit her out with shoes with squeakers in the heels! Seriously? Why didn't they just give her a drum and whistle and hand me a noose?

Finally, in the heat of the mid afternoon we rolled into Jodhpur station. I disembarked and made may way through the 'blue city' to the hostel where I settled myself in the roof top restaurant which was over looked by Jodhpur Fort's walls and treated myself to a beer! Jodhpur was actually a very pleasant town. The winding streets of the old town, lined with houses all painted in blue, nestled at the foot of the imposing Fort's walls and spread down into a bustling bazar. Unfotunately, however, while on my way out to see the Fort I was told that there had been an incident and it would be closed for the day. I later found that this 'incident' was in fact a stampede that had occured while pilgrims went to worship the statue of Ganesh in one the temples there. The cause of the stampede is not entirely known. Some locals suspected it was a bomb scare but, the papers suggested that it was just a crush to get though the narrow corridors to the temple. Either way it rendered approximately 300 people dead and many more injured. I decided not to go to the doctors to check out my hypochondriac potential malaria i.e. a cold!

The Fort reopened the next day and after being assured that it wouldn't be disrespectful to go, Julien (a Belgian guy I'd met) and I went to visit the Fort. There was a lot of press and camera crews there but, most unsettling were that people were still clearing up the debris from the previous day which mainly entailed collecting abondoned shoes and scraps of clothing. We wandered around the impressive Fort in a somewhat somber mood before returning to get the bus onwards to Jaisalmer




Jaisalmer
We took the bus to Jaisalmer which was fairly painless if not a bit warm and arrived at another fortified town but, this time in the middle of the desert. Ornate havelis and winding streets sat both inside and out of the Fort which due to its colour and surroundings looks like an elaborate sand castle over looking the town. We spent an enjoyable time browsing the markets and exploring the fort and then headed off for a few days camel jockeying in the desert. This was great fun and although we got shunted around between groups a bit, spending the nights in dunes and the days aboard a camel or in small desert villages was really quite pleasant. For some reason I was left to my own devices with my camel while the others were all roped together and lead - I'm not sure what it was that lead them to incorrectly assume I had some idea what I was doing but, after some time I did managed to get a trot on with one of them after being left straggling at the back trying to encourage it to stop eating all the trees for most of the way! We spent the last night with a bunch of Koreans some of whom were heading to the UK to live for 6months. I managed to scare one of them to death when I told him that Brighton, where he was to be stationed, was the Gay Capital of England! He spent the next hour quizzing me on how to avoid 'Them'! Gay pride is clearly yet to reach Korea! I spent the rest of the evening trying to avoid the offer of a one on one moonlight camel ride through the dunes with the guide. Julien, despite sitting there looking at the 8 other camels, was told there weren't enough camels for him to come too!





Diu
I had been planning to do Udaipur in Rajasthan which I am told is lovely but, I started to feel I was doing things because I felt I should rather than because I really wanted to so I decided instead to head down to Diu, a small, lesser travelled, formerly Portuguese owned island off the coast of Gujerat. This was also a bit of a mission to get to and from requiring an overnight bus from Jaisalmer to Ahemdebad where I got chucked out of my bunk half way through the journey as they'd overbooked the bus and was then unceremoniously dumped at 4am in the a distinctly dodgy looking part of the city! I made my way to the bus station where as soon as people saw me they started begging whether they were beggars or not. One woman even lined her children up in front of me and made them stand and stare at me assumably until i got sick of turning my back on them and them following me. Luckily, I was rescued by some off duty Indian Army representatives who told them all to get lost and insisted on accompanying me on my way! Three local buses and about 16 hours later I arrived in the refreshingly hassle-free island of Diu. The people were friendly and said hello without asking whether I wanted a rickshaw and the crumbling colonial buildings reminded me of Mozambique although they were decorted sufficiently garishly to remind you that you were definately still in India!

I got a push bike and pedaled around the town, visited (another) Fort, the markets, the churches and the beach and met a group of photography students all on a jolly from univeristy who I spent most of my time with. It was thoroughly relaxing, lazing on the beach and enjoying the local cuisine. The only drawback being the completely blatant perving exercises from the local men who would do drive bys along the beach, turn around, drive back, get out, come down to the beach, sit on the bench and then try to film us in beachwear! Rude!




After a few days relaxing it was time to get back on the road, the next stop was Goa via Mumbai which yielded another interesting journey...

Full pictures at www.picasaweb.google.com/dabilster choose Rajasthan or Diu albums

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