Namaste from India

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Our flight from Bangkok to Kolkata was filled with apprehension at what awaited us upon landing. Our fears were slightly allayed on the plane as we read a copy of the Hindustan Times which had photographs of India featuring familiar items like buses and houses. However, on arrival we soon discovered that our initial fears were correct - we had arrived in a third world country.

Kol-Kacka
We had the foresight whilst in Bangkok to research what we might find at Kolkata airport. We knew there would be money changing facilities (you can't get Rupees outside of India) and a government run pre-pay taxi scheme to hopefully help minimise the chances of being totally 'taken for a ride' (sorry).
Of course, as with all best layed plans, this went to pot the moment we got through customs. First of all, the money changer was out to lunch so we had to wait around until they returned. Having sorted out some cash we strolled over to the pre-pay taxi booth only to discover that our lovely hotel was 70 kms away. "Oh dear", we thought, "that's going to take about an hour". But we had mistakenly based this on the Western concept of roads and were quickly corrected by the Taxi man that this would take more like 4 hours. If we were lucky.
Due to this distance we couldn't take a normal taxi. Instead we agreed to take a private car and again we based this on the Western concept of a car with luxuries such as air-con, steering and suspension. In reality we got a Hindustan Ambassador, a car designed in the 1950's which remains unchanged to this day. All this was at a pre-arranged price of about £20 right up until the moment the driver set off and started haggling again. It might have only been £2 we were arguing about, but it was the principle of the thing. Eventually a compromise was reached and we hit the "road". We settled back and started taking in the sights assaulting our eyes.

We've since had 4 weeks to debate how best to describe our first impressions on that journey, but to this day the necessary vocabulary escapes us - you simply need to see it for yourselves. Avoiding cows became the norm. An utter disregard for basic road rules such as which side of the road to drive on was accepted. The taxi's horn was blowing for the vast majority of the journey. As the dark approached, the headlights remained firmly off. Overtaking a bus which was over taking a lorry in the dark (still with no lights on) was a regular occurence. The driver was spotted several times crossing himself before making a manoeuvre - religious faith plays a major part in the Indian highway code. All this whilst crashing from pothole to pothole. Three and a half hours and 1 minor crash later, we reached our hotel, our refuge for the next 3 days until our flight to Nepal.
After finding our room and quickly locating the bar, we had several large bottles of Kingfisher to steady our nerves. Luckily our hotel was quite luxurious which served as a distraction from the inevitable return journey to the airport. We spent our time reading, eating, sleeping and watching workmen cutting the grass by hand(?!). Upon checking out we had our first taste of customer service India style. It took 7 people an hour to unsucessfully settle our bill (we ended paying twice just to allow us enough time to catch our flight). The journey back was fairly uneventful except when 15 men blockaded the road and forced our car to stop so they could beg for money through the window. After some sharp words to the driver from Imogen, he simply floored the throttle and we were away. That girl's got balls!

KathmanPOO
As we landed in Nepal we were glad to be temporarily out of India and ecstatic to meet our guide for the next three weeks. His name was Abhijeet (Abhi or 'Dad' to us) and he was a Hindu Indian with excellent English and fantastic local knowledge - our saviour! We spent our first night having a meal and getting to know him. The other member of our tour was a Swiss-German chap called Peter and it would remain the four of us until we reached Delhi where another 14 people would join us. We stayed in an area of Kathmandu called Thamel which is popular with tourists. In England, streets this narrow would be either one-way or more likely closed to traffic completely. Not so here, where a meeting of buses is a common and often hilarious occurence. There is no tarmac on the roads, only dust, but this gives it an olde world charm, with loads of shops, bars and restaurants packed in tightly. The people seemed very friendly and the nightlife surprisingly vibrant. The next day we were up bright and early for a walking tour with a local guide. We climbed approximately 360 steps to the Swayambunath Temple (known locally as the 'Monkey Temple') which is more than 2,000 years old with magnificent views of the city. Back in town we wandered around Durbar Square where we could see the old Royal Palace and Kasthamandap (AKA House of Woods) which gives Kathmandu its name. In here lives a young girl called 'the Living Goddess' who pops her head out of the window every day for about 3 seconds. We were fortunate enough to witness this although if we're honest its significance was somewhat wasted on us.
In the evening we had a Nepalese meal with traditional dancing where we developed a taste for a local dish called Mo-Mo, which we highly recommend. It is a bit like dim-sum and is dipped in a spicy sauce. Thank God we built up our chilli resistance in Thailand! Abhi took us to a late-night rooftop bar to see a live band. Kathmandu is a lot more lively than we thought.
The next day was spent travelling to a place called Bhairwa, about 10 mins from the Nepalese side of Nepal/India border. We would have travelled by road but due to increased guerilla activity along the route we had to take a flight. We flew with 'Yeti Air', that world famous airline, on a plane with propellors!! It only had 18 seats and any fears we already had were compounded as the hostess handed out boiled sweets and cotton wool before take off. Why on Earth did we need cotton wool? A quick look at Abhi demonstrated it was for shoving into your ears to block out the drone of the plane. The flight itself was mercifully smooth and only lasted 40 minutes.
At 8am the following morning we walked from Nepal to India. This is only 200 metres but it sounds good doesn't it?! The border is unlike anything we've ever seen before. Not only is it bizarre, but it is also a bazaar! Shops line both sides of the road and you have to take great care not to be hit by one of the millions of trucks thundering past while your trying to avoid the mud and cow-pats. One of the many corrupt Indian border-guards tried to hitch a ride with us for free (under the guise of being a security guard) but Abhi had briefed us well and we were able to feign ignorance and pass through the border unscathed. An 8 hour taxi ride then followed to India's holiest of cities, Varanasi.

VaraNASTY
That evening a delicious meal in a lovely restaurant was cut cruelly short as 'Ghandi's Revenge' put in its inevitable appearance. And so began several days of being able to wee out of our bottoms. This made the 5am sunrise boat ride along the Ganges river the following morning even more interesting! Every morning at sunrise, thousands of Hindus bathe in this holiest of rivers as they believe the water has sin-cleansing powers. Some are locals but many thousands make a pilgrimage from all over the World, sometimes as a once-in-a-lifetime trip. We were very fortunate to see it but decided not to participate ourselves, partly because we're not Hindu and partly because we'd seen the locals up-river using it as a toilet and heard rumours of dead cows floating in it. In the words of a fellow traveller,

Your faith has to be strong to drink this sewage

The people access the river via a series of bathing ghats (steps down to the water) which have been there for hundreds of years. Indeed Varanasi is considered possibly the oldest city in the world. At either end of the ghats there is a cremation area which is the only place in India where a traditional 24-hour funeral pyre can be burned. It costs a lot of money (5,000 Rs+) to have your body burned in this holiest of places. We disembarked near one of these for a tour of the old city streets. The smoke of a recent cremation still hung steady in the air and prompted our fellow traveller Peter to remark

I smell dead people

We all felt a bit sick after that.
It is a testament to the city's age that when you talk about narrow streets, this place really means business. Two pedestrians cannot pass each other in places without having to turn sideways. Throw a couple of bulls into the mix and the pedestrian jams really start to build up. We didn't get much time to look at the scenery as we were constantly scanning the ground to avoid the ankle deep cow-mines covering almost every square inch. Soon our guts urged us to sprint back to our hotel room toilet where we remained essentially imprisoned for the next 2 days, hostages of our own bowels and utterly miserable.

Delhi BELLY
The prospect of a 13-hour train journey from Varanasi to Delhi had us breaking open the Immodium for the first time on our trip. Take it from people of experience, trying to aim at a squat toilet on a bumpy Indian train is no mean feat. Actually the train was surprisingly comfortable, although it was not designed for 6ft 4" European frames as Paul discovered. Eight people shared a compartment, all of whom seemed very pleasant apart from the old man in a hospital gown with a mask over his mouth who we managed to 'trade' for someone less contagious (well, we were ill already).
As we approached Delhi station early the next morning, we enjoyed the sunrise which illuminated the many locals taking their morning ablutions on the railway track. Just want you want to see prior to breakfast. We were amused at the cows wandering aimlessly along the platforms at Delhi Central whilst Abhi searched out our transport to the hotel. After dumping our bags we headed straight out for a 5-hour tour of Delhi's main sights. First up was the Qutb Minar Complex which is the site of India's first mosque, or at least what is left of it. Still in tact is the fluted red-brick sandstone 72.5m high tower inscribed with passages from the Koran. This was once named one of the "Wonders of the East" second only to the Taj Mahal, although if you ask us, the tower has an unfortunate hint of factory chimney about it. Indeed it would not look out of place with a wisp of smoke blowing out of the top. Next up was Humayun's Tomb which is considered to be the draft copy of the Taj Mahal, built to house the body of the Moghul Emperor Humayun. In the same grounds is a tomb for the Emperor's barber which surprised us somewhat. It turns out there was great respect for a man who held a cut-throat to the Emperor's throat.
After driving past India Gate, the Houses of Parliament and the Government Buildings, last stop was Raj Ghat which was the site of Gandhi's cremation in 1948.
Once back at the hotel for a well deserved Kingfisher beer, it was time to meet the other 14 people on our tour who would be with us for the next 2 weeks. Fortunately several of them proved to be likeminded travellers and we bonded quickly over the evening meal. Our new family for the next fortnight!

AGRO
Another early start, this time to catch the train to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. Travelling second class meant we got the opportunity to watch the locals in 'cattle class' catching the train. It works like this; as the train is arriving at the station, you start sprinting along the platform edge and jump on before it stops, the earlier the better. This allows you to get a prime spot sometimes even inside the train. Thank God we had allocated seats (courtesy of Abhi). The 45 minute delay compares favourably with what we're used to back home. Maybe this is another export from the English?
Our (fairly scabby) hotel was sandwiched between Costa Coffee and Pizza Hut. This forced us to break our 'no fast food chains' promise for the one and only time on our whole trip. We opted for Costa coffee which seemed the lesser of two evils. At about 4pm we took the bus for the short journey to the Taj Mahal with a plan to enjoy it at the best time of day - sunset. There is a 400m anti-pollution zone around it which meant we had to transfer to an electric bus for the last leg of the journey. This gave the beggars and hawkers an extra opportunity to irritate us. Indeed children selling postcards even thrust their hands through the windows of the bus to try and get a sale. This all gets a bit much after a while but hygiene concerns prevented us from biting them.
So finally we were at the jewel of the Eastern world - built out of love by Moghul Emperor Shah Jahan in the 17th Century as a tomb to his beloved wife. We can confirm it is indeed extraordinarily beautiful, but we were not struck down in tears by its ultimate majesty as perhaps we had expected. Still it was definitely worth seeing. Just as impressive as the exterior was the display of Indian crowd mentality inside. Here is a tomb which has stood for 300 years, and yet people were so keen to see it they were crushing each other to get inside. What's the hurry, Mr Patel? It'll still be there in 5 mins time! Only 2 police were on duty to calm the multitude and in the end, despite the solemnity of the location, an inevitable fight broke out with police punching people in the face - another situation which was so utterly bizarre we found it highly amusing (they weren't punching us and it helps being taller than everyone else). We crawled out and counted our limbs before calling it a day and heading back. It is worth the battle to see the inside if only because here is the only part of the whole building which is asymmetrical. Everything is built around the Emperor's wife's tomb which lies directly in the centre, but his body buried years later at her side sort of sticks out on its own. It's quite a cool quirk although we're glad it didn't turn into our final resting place too!

There isn't really much else in Agra so the next day we were on the bus heading for the famous city of Jaipur (so named after the excellent curry house in Woking?). On the way we stopped off at an old Moghul city called Fatehpur Sikri. It really is amazing how these places have survived hundreds of years in great condition. In the case of Fatephur Sikri, the water supply from the local lake dried up after just 12 years and the city was abandoned. For this reason it survives today in great nick. It could be likened to the original Spearmint Rhino's, as the emperor who built it had a hareem of 365 women and even had a courtyard for them to dance in. He must've been an ancient ancestor of Hugh Heffner, or at least that's how we interpreted our guide's description. A word of warning though, whenever you visit places in India, do not take any photos of the locals. They do things to draw your attention to them (here they were diving into what looked like a septic tank), and as soon as you click the camera shutter, they're after you to collect payment. But forewarned is forearmed and Abhi made sure we all looked the other way.

JaiPOOR
Mr Khan, our bus driver who looked suspiciously like a jovial Saddam Hussain, celebrated our arrival in Jaipur by crashing into the car in front of him. Fortunately no-one was hurt and we felt we'd earned our driving stripes. This was his one and only indiscretion which really is quite a good record considering the state of India's roads. We spent the evening having dinner in a beautiful restaurant garden with local entertainment laid on including a magician (we'll call him Patel Daniels) and a eunuch who could balance flaming cooking pots stacked on his head. The Royal Variety Performance could learn a thing or two from these guys. After a few local ales we were all up on stage learning traditional dances and playing with an old man's massive organ (a bit like an accordian). Jaipur is known as the 'pink city', as the old town is probably painted pink under 400 years of dirt. It is contained within huge walls which also house an incredible observatory and palace. The observatory has a sundial which is accurate to within 20 seconds along with lots of other scientific instruments, all hundreds of years old and carved with great precision from solid marble. To be honest these guys must've been pretty clever as we still have no idea what half the instruments did. After a tour of the palace under the expert guidance of none other than the mayor, we headed out of town to the Amber Fort. This is 11km North of Jaipur and the last leg of the journey involved travelling through more tiny ancient streets at hair-raising speed in jeeps driven by more asylum out-patients. But it was worth it, you need to see the Amber Fort for yourself but in our opinion it was more impressive than the Taj Mahal. The site was chosen as it is surrounded by
mountains giving a great view of any maurauding army on their way towards you. A 36km wall was built around it and this stretches out across the hills like the Great Wall of China. Nevertheless many of the Indian tourists that afternoon found the 17 honkies walking around to be a far bigger attraction. Countless Indian photo albums must be filled with pictures of random white tourists, but we can't see the point really?
Jaipur has a magnificent cinema and is a mecca for Bollywood films. We went along in the evening to watch "Laaga Chunari Mein Daag - Journey Of A Woman" (English: My Veil is Stained), the latest Bollywood blockbuster. The foyer was more like that of a theatre, in pink with curtains and frills everywhere. The film may have been in Hindi but we were able to easily follow what was going on thanks to the simple plot and spatterings of English words every few sentences. It was fantastic! To finish off the night we raced tuk-tuks home.

PushKACK
After Varanasi, Pushkar was the second-most religious place on our itinery. It is set on the banks of a holy lake and has many temples including the only one dedicated to the Hindu God Brahma. For this reason there are big signs at the city limits outlining the extensive list of do's and don'ts (mostly don'ts). It's a dry state but this didn't seem to stop the hippies who have settled there from being seemingly very stoned - opium appears to be legal. Walking around the narrow streets through the bazaars and markets it reminded us of Kathmandu. After the walking tour we settled at a restaurant called Sunset Cafe to watch the sun set over the lake, knocking back a few non-alcoholic Becks. Why didn't we drink water and save some Rupees?!

KhejarLOO
If you look in any guide book of India there will be no reference to the small village of Khejarla, located between Jaipur and Jodhpur. But we were fortunate enough to be taken there on our tour. On top of the hill is the magnificent Fort Khejarla, built in 1705 and now a beautiful 5-star hotel. We'd visited lots of forts but now we we going to spend the night staying in one! Indeed it is owned by the mayor of Khejarla who was our host for the day and joined us for dinner. The rooms were beautifully decorated and there was a swimming pool to cool off in. More importantly after spending a very sober evening in Pushkar there was a well-stocked bar which the whole tour group indulged in. The mayor let us try on his turban - did you know that the average turban is made up of 9 metres of material expertly wrapped around the head?! After a great evening of revellry we were very thankful that the bus ride the next morning was only 1 hour!

CHUNDERlao
After staying in a beautiful fort, we felt compelled to stay in another! Chandelao fort is 300 years old and also owned by the town's Mayor. Again it was beautifully restored and had a well stocked bar. Its semi-desert location was ideal for a jeep safari in the afternoon where we got the opportunity to see water buffalo, antelope and wild peacocks. There were also a couple of stops at remote villages for a look at local life. The children all wanted us to take digital pictures of them so that they could see themselves on the screens. We were like a freak show turning up in town! At the last village, we were invited to join the 70-year-old village elder for his opium ceremony. Opium is considered a way of life in India, which explains why you see so many smacked-out grandads asleep at the side of the road in the evenings. The traditional way of consuming it is to filter it through some muslin with water and then drink it out of the hand. Paul did sip from the old man's hand, first making sure it was his right hand and not his left or 'wiping' hand. Well, when you've got Delhi-Belly anyway what is there to lose?! That evening was the birthday of two members of our tour group and Abhi had managed to organise a cake and fireworks. These were enjoyed atop the fort walls on a beautiful terrace lit up by an almost full moon. The traditional Indian approach to health and safety meant the fireworks were not stored in a tin box but instead stacked about a metre away from where the rockets were being lit. The launchpad was an empty bottle of Kingfisher and the rockets had fuses of about 3/10ths of a second. It was only a matter of time before the serenity of the evening was shattered by a rogue rocket firing around everyones legs and setting their newly purchased Indian garments on fire. No-one was hurt and it added to the excitement of the evening.

Camel SaFARTi
After a short drive to the edge of the Thar desert somewhere North West of Jodhpur, our bus stopped near a large group of camels (not sure what the collective noun is - a hump?!). We were size matched to a similarly-proportioned beast before saddling up. Imogen's camel was called Carlo, while Paul had an enormous one called Rakesh with an appropriately windy bottom. We were taken for a trek through the desert for a couple of hours, passing people farming crops in the tiny settlements out there. This has to be a pretty harsh existence, although the little kids happily ran to see us pass by shouting "ta ta" and grinning. Those members of the tour who had worn skimpy pants that day suffered some chaffing in delicate areas, but we were both glad to have dressed appropriately and were unscathed. A 'Camel Chaffe' section needs to be added to the Lonely Planet guide, we feel.
Two hours later as the sun began to set we arrived at a desert camp which was to be our home for the evening. In fact these were the poshest 5-star tents we'd ever seen, they even had beds, flushing toilets and running water! Our stay coincided perfectly with a full moon and the lack of any other light-source for miles around meant a breathtaking view of the night sky. Some local people gave us music and traditional dancing while we enjoyed a delicious meal. Fabulous.

JaisalMERDE
Known as 'The Golden City', Jaisalmer is basically a city within the walls of a huge fort on top of a hill. It is unique as it is still a fully functioning city today, rather than just a preserved historic site for visitors. Sadly tourism has taken its toll and the proliferation of restaurants and hotels replacing the traditional living quarters have increased the load on the city's foundations. This means Jaisalmer is slowly sinking. If you ever go there, make sure you stay in a hotel outside the walls to avoid contributing to the demise of this great place. Whilst the rest of our tour group took the opportunity to go shopping in the city's many markets, as we had no room for trinkets in our backpacks we instead spent a relaxing day on the rooftop terrace of our hotel enjoying a great view. The name 'Golden City' comes from the colour of the local sandstone and the afternoon sunlight illuminates it beautifully.

JodhPUKE
In keeping with other Indian cities, Jodhpur has a colourful name - 'The Blue City'. Founded in 1459, many buildings in the old town are a pale blue, supposedly acting as a mosquito repellant?! It also has the requisite fort towering over it, known as Meherangarh Fort. In the afternoon we got the opportunity to explore the fort with its beautiful carved walls and ancient courtyards. Imogen visited an Astrologer (they're big on Astrology over here) and had her palm read. Ask her for next week's lottery numbers! We descended some frighteningly steep cobbled streets into the walled market area fighting off market traders and small children left, right and centre. We were rewarded with a delicious lassi at Jodhpur's famous lassi shop. A lassi, for the uninitiated, is a yoghurt drink blended with spices. This one tasted like lemon cheesecake. In some of the cities we had visited previously, there had been lassi shops advertising the infamous 'Bang Lassi', essentially a lassi blended with marijuana. We suspect our tour guide thought we were all drug addicts, such was the severity of his warnings against sampling Bang Lassi! Dinner in the evening was fantastic, and it was probably the only time in the whole tour where everyone was served at the same time.

The bus departed early the next day as we had a hefty drive ahead of us to Udaipur. En route we stopped briefly at a huge temple devoted to the Jain religion, a variation on Buddhism. It has 1,400 marble pillars each uniquely and exquisitely carved. But as there were ridiculous beehives and monkeys all around the place, the architecture was somewhat wasted on us. We were scared back to the coach by a suspect rabid dog and a bull eating a plastic bag.
The onward journey from the temple required our coach to scale mountains along one of the hairiest roads we've ever seen. Apart from one corner where Mr Khan's bus came to a halt on a blind bend and he had to perform a hill-start, we made it up there without issue. To illustrate how dangerous the road was, there is a shrine at the summit by the side of the road, where passing motorists give a monetary donation as thanks for safe passage. Mr Khan threw in a few Rupees on our behalf, but we were prepared to throw in our credit cards!

uDIAPER
By evening we had reached Udaipur and had another great meal in a riverside restaurant. The owner kept vintage English cars which kept Paul quiet for a while. Udaipur was the location for several scenes in the Bond film Octopussy. Next morning Imogen was struck down with FLUdaipur so stayed in bed whilst the rest of the gang set off early to see the sights. Udaipur seems to be the only Indian city without a colourful name but it more than makes up for that with it's huge palace on top of the hill. After a lengthy delay buying entrance tickets caused by traditional Indian inefficiency, we met our guide and went for a look around. Considering the size of the palace, the corridors and rooms are suspiciously small. The further you go in, the narrower it gets. As Paul hunched over in one of the narrowest corridors he was convinced that around the corner he would find a small bottle on the floor with "Drink Me" written on it. Shortly after this it all started going a bit wrong. We caught up with a large group of large German tourists who were trying to look in the same small bedroom we were. Then our worst fears were realised as a group of Indian tourists with their legendary impatience arrived and started pouring into the already full room. The resulting chaos and claustrophobia rendered three European tourists unconscious. It was like the Taj Mahal all over again! The unconscious people were carried outside to recover and we escaped to look around a near by temple before stopping for a well deserved lunch. Paul spent the afternoon at the vintage car museum down the road whilst the non-petrolheads took a boat ride to the Lake Palace Hotel in the middle of Udaipur's man-made lake, the largest in Asia.
But what of poor Imogen?! Fortunately the rest of the tour group had better medical provisions than any local hospital and insisted on giving her every drug they could find washed down with lashings of ginger tea. She was much better the next day, if suspiciously wide-eyed. This was just as well as we had to catch a public bus for the 5 hour journey to our penultimate stop at Ahmedabad.

AhmedaBAD
The bus ride was surprisingly civilised and we made good time to Ahmedabad. Tuk-tuks took us on a terrifying 15 minute journey from the bus-station (a sandy patch of wasteground in the middle of the city) to our hotel. We can recommend little in Ahmedabad, the overall appearance was that of attrocious poverty and dirt, as bad as anywhere we had seen in India. Several early starts were catching up with us and the worst was yet to come as the last leg of our journey was to be a morning train to Mumbai setting off at 04:50am! We got an early night and tried to get some sleep.

BUMbai
It was comforting to note that no-one on our tour was a morning person. So we all stood like zombies on Ahmedabad station at 04:50am waiting for the train. It was only 10 mins late and we had allocated seats so we could avoid the fisticuffs the locals go through. The journey itself was again surprisingly pleasant and by 13:30 we were within the city limits of Mumbai. A large proportion of Mumbai residents live in appalling conditions in enormous slum areas around the city. These are clearly seen from the train and make difficult viewing. In the 21st century no-one should have to live in conditions like that.
Another colourful taxi ride followed to our hotel, although downtown Mumbai struck us as one of the most Westernised places we'd seen in the whole of India. That's not to say it was clean or pleasant though! Some parts of it (such as Victoria station) resemble the architecture of famous buildings in London, but it is best described as London gone wrong. This was the last night of our tour and we had a final meal with the gang in a very nice bar. We gave gifts to our guide and sang a version of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" which we had rewritten to describe our Indian adventures. It was quite sad to say goodbye to our new friends, but secretly we were quite pleased to be getting the hell out of India - a month is a long time when you only eat curry and are continuously being begged and stared at. Nevertheless we've had lots of offers to visit our fellow tourists which we'll probably take up at some point in the future. A 3am start did take its toll on everyone though, meaning that a late night was out of the question. Next morning we were up, dressed and ready to go well before the taxi arrived to take us to the airport! We don't think we've ever been so happy and even an hour's delay sitting on the tarmac at Mumbai airport did little to dampen our spirits! Next stop DUBAI!!!

You can imagine there are countless stories, both good and bad, that we haven't had room to mention here. For example we could talk all day about the difficulties encountered on a daily basis trying to order a simple meal. We won't be returning to India in a hurry (although the South is still on our list for the future), but the only way to really appreciate the place is to see it for yourself. And pack a spare bog roll!!

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Photos

Our taxi - a Hindustan Ambassador
This may have been the turbo model

Hand-mowing the hotel grounds
It's a lot less bovva than a hovva...

Downtown Kathmandu
Look at the size of his backpack!

Fatehpur Sikri
It's amazing how carvings like this have lasted hundreds of years

Party time in Jaipur
What a fantastic organ!

A doorway in the Amber Fort
...clearly designed for Jaipur Umpur Lumpurs...

Imogen sporting a turban
This belonged to the mayor

Jaisalmer fort
Watch out, it's sinking!

Facial hair extraordinaire
Our friend Rachel with a palace employee

Group meal
Our new friends from around the World...

Downtown Mumbai
A steak waiting to happen

Comments

[Barry]

hello HELLO hello
Hello Hello come on !!!! more travel blog please ... it can't just end here, whats been going on what adventures have you been up to !!!! It's like LOST without the Polarbear and the Fat Guy. Please do continue the next exciting installment. Hope your both O.K. !!! Barry