Our next stop was the town of Madurai. We ended up in one of the more expensive hotels in town for a bit of a treat plus it was also a little hard finding a place with availability. Madurai is a fairly large place with a lot to do so we decided to stop here for a couple of nights. We went for a walk around town the first evening looking for the Meenakshi-Sundareswar Temple grounds and gave up. When we woke up in the morning we realised we had been standing pretty much in front of it. We have no idea how we missed it considering the size of it! Anyway we took a walk around the temple we had come to see. It is a massive and ancient complex with detailed carvings every where ... read more

By looking at some of the next photos you may be wondering if we ended up in some weird "adult shop" that deals with stone carvings. But no, we went to a place known as Khajuraho to visit a collection of temples that have been exquisitely carved with all manner of adult themed friezes around the sides. The temples themselves are wonderful feats of architecture, but the friezes, with the detail to attention, skill in construction and XXX rating in nature are what makes the site so famous. They would be an interesting enough site anywhere but in India against the general conservative values people have and women being so covered up at all times makes them particularly scandalous. So we just had to have a look. Apparently after the temples were built and abandoned, the ... read more

The main reason why we, and hoards of other people, come to Agra is to see that white thingy, what do you call it, ah, the Taj Mahal! On arriving in Agra we were surprised by how clean the streets were in comparison to other cities - apparently they only clean around the area of the Taj just for us tourists. Although there is a vehicle exclusion zone which initially leads you to think that it may be relaxing to walk around, you soon learn that the lack of vehicles is made up in touts offering you all kinds of rubbish on a stick. I think our favourite item for sale was a snow globe taj mahal. Funny that, we had just been walking around wondering what the Taj Mahal would look like in a snow ... read more

Back on the road again, this time to Mt Abu. We came here on the advice of others, and it was well worth the trip. Mt Abu is a hill station in Rajasthan and is popular with local tourists trying to get away from the heat. There is a beautiful lake in the town which provides a nice walk, but the main reason we came to this town was to see the Dilwara Temple complex, another set of Jain temples carved in white marble. They were built between the 11th and 13th centuries and are just as impressive as the Ranakpur temples in Udaipur. Unfortunately there are no photos allowed in the complex so we have nothing to show from the temples but some postcards we bought. After a night in Mt Abu, we decided to ... read more

We had originally planned to spend 2 days here.... ended up spending four and loving it. Udaipur is sometimes called the Venice of India, and although it resembles it in parts, and is thought to be quite romantic, it is very very different to Venice! It is more commonly known as the city of lakes and this is probably more appropriate. Our first day in Udaipur was spent taking it easy and getting our bearings. Garry, not able to say no to anyone, ended up in a few tailor stores even though we had no interest in getting a thing made. These touts are relentless. They tell you that they have a brother or a cousin who owns a shop and is the best tailor in town and you must have a look. In reality, they ... read more