Raelauk

The journey from Goa to delhi was our longest yet, a mammoth train on a high speed 29 hour trip covering 2029km in one hit. We got settled in and soon enough we were on our way, i'd bought a book from the station and the only english they had that looked even remotely interesting was Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, si i bought it for the voyage back home. on the train ride, a guy came up to me and asked for a lighter, we chatted and had a few cigarettes and discovered that we were goin to delhi together and were both flying out the next day, he was going home to england as were we but we were on different flights. arriving in delhi after a good 30 hours and we all clubbed in ... read more

The journey down to Goa on the night bus wasn't too bad. Our very friendly yet expensive travel agent guy told us that it'd be a nightmre for us on the cheaper bus and we should book the even more expensive sleeper option but our budget wouldn't allow that so we persisted and got the cheap seats. About half way along the road we stopped for a break at a roadside dhaba, the place seamed clean enough but a little too expensive for my stomach so we munched on the crisps we'd brought with us and relaxed in an empty bus for a while. Soon enough the bus filled back up and we were moving once again. Arrival in goa was a little bit of a round and about mission of sorts as we went straight ... read more

Well, our journey continues down the coast from Diu to Mumbai. What a city! A little while out of the sleepy little ex-portugese enclave and a good ten hours left, we settle in on our train to get a little sleep. Seriously Britain, sleeper trains and buses are fantastic! what a way to travel! The constant battering of touts isn't that funny at times but hey ho. We all got to Bombay and made our way to Colaba on the southern point of the city. This place is massive! 20,000,000+ people and counting is ridiculous!! We shopped around for a little before checking into the Salvation army hostel dorm rooms which were not quite as bad as i'd imagined them to be. Our first night in the dorms was ok, i had a few lads to ... read more

"Well that was 'fun' wasn't it!" Our night in the big ass sleeper bus, in my eyes, was fun: People walking up and down the outside whenever we stopped, banging on the windows trying to sell us everything from kitchen utensils to bottles of water and so much chai. The speed bumps. The heat from all the passengers. The constant beeping of the buses horn and all the other vehicles. The swerving of the bus to miss animal, mineral, vegetable, vehicle or the wild lesser spotted pothole slamming us from one side to another. After a certain speed, the entire vehicle would try and vibrate itself to pieces. Every indian on board was playing songs from bollywood movies on their phones. The smell of feet, urine, shit, vomit, sweat, tobacco and animals mixed in with masala ... read more

Jaisalmer is an amazing place! So far i think it has the most beautiful buildings i've seen in the country! all golden sandstone(fronted at least) and most are pretty old! Our hotel happened to be in the fort itself and in my oppinion is a lovely place! sat on the rooftop of the hotel having lunch on a bastion is a brilliant experience! Unfortunately it wasn't all good in this city... I experienced some of the most shocking animal cruelty i've seen so far in my entire life! Jill, Andrea and I were walking up the road when we heard a dog screaming with pain, i looked up ahead and saw two indian men, one with a 5 foot long pair of iron mongers calipers locked round a dogs back end, this dog was screaming and ... read more

So... Jodhpur... where do i start with this... We got into the town at around 8/9pm and headed straight to the hotels. the first hotel manager tried to screw us completely! When we asked how much his admittedly basic rooms were, he replied with "first you agree to stay and book, then i tell you price" so we gave him a big fuck you and got the hell out of there, the next was within our price range so we agreed to stay there. The owners of this hotel seemed genuinely annoyed to have to prepare a room in there establishment for us and made us feel more than a little uncomfortable. After putting out stuff in our rooms we made our way to the rooftop to have some food. Rebecca had already ordered mashed potato ... read more

Udaipur is a beautiful city(the area we were in at least) and has a reputation of being the most romantic city in India... In a country that has a severe intolerance of romance and love in general thats quite a claim. We arrived in the mid-morning and set about trying to find a hotel, this didn't go as smoothly as expected and after an hour or so we decided to go for the more expensive option(500Rs per night or 7GBP) with an absolutely gorgeous rooftop and nice views over the lake with the mandatory 7pm nightly showing of James Bond's "Octopussy" in every single hotel and restaraunt in the city!! After a few days chilling out on the roof we did the tourist thing and had a boat ride round the lake seeing the sights from ... read more

All packed up and ready to leave Pushkar, we met on the ground floor of the hotel with our bags and our fondness for this little town in our hearts. We said our goodbyes to our very friendly hosts and made our way to the bus stand. on the way to the bus i turned around to see our hotel manager pull up on his scooter to say farewell and wish us luck on the way. The bus was full when we arrived at the stand so we put our luggage on the rack and got comfy on our bags on the roof. I really enjoyed riding on the roof of the bus, plenty of leg room, open air, comfy seating, a pleasant view of the journey and a party atmosphere around us. Plenty of laughter, ... read more

After Jaipur, we jumped on a train and traveled to Ajmer for our bus connection to Pushkar, a quaint little pilgrimage town on the shores of a holy lake surrounded by ghats. the journey went pretty smoothly(as smooth as Indian journeys can go) and in no time at all we were in Ajmer station... An hour or so later and we're at the bus stand waiting for our chariot for the last leg. We got onto the bus and we're immediately assisted by an Indian man behind us who help us with our bags and spoke decent English. He gave us a card for his hotel and told us his brother is the manager and he is the owner and he's just on his way home from... I don't remember where but it didnt matter at ... read more

Getting the train tickets to Jaipur were no problem at all... one queue and five minutes later and we were making our way to the platform. There was a surprising amount of westerners on our platform and it didn't take long to get chatting to a couple who informed us that the journey was seventeen hours long so we both found a corner to bed in to. As i got comfy on a luggage rack, the train began to fill almost to its limit. Three or four stops later and the maximum capacity had been totally forgotten about with five people to each group of three seats and four to every luggage rack plus the people sleeping in the aisles with mice running over them and people wedge into almost everywhere you can a person. With ... read more