Pushkar, Jodhpur and Udaiper

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After a long journey we arrived in Pushkar and it was really good to arrive at a clean hotel with a pool! We had lunch and then booked our camel trek through the desert... It was an amazing experience but so painful after 3 hours, and it was so hot!

I couldnt believe our guide could find his way as we were literally in the middle of the desert! We saw buffalow and anitlope which was great, but the highlight had to be the sunset, so stunning!

Pushkar is a very small city with not an awful lot to see. We visited the Hindu temple which had great views, although was extremely smelly!! (open sewers)

After packing up all our stuff, again! We travelled to Jodhpur which is about 4 hours from Pushkar. We arrived at our hotel and our hearts sank.... it was so awful, really dirty, no clean sheets, smelt so bad we decided that we would ask to be moved, and without any arguments they upgraded us to the suite, which was just about ok, still really dirty! We both decided Jodhpur is the worst city we have been to so far, although most of India is dirty etc, this place seemed to be on a different scale, is hard enough trying not to gag as the open sewers were over flowing!

We visited a huge fort which was impressive and was well worth seeing. We also went to the huge tower there, although we lost our driver for about an hour, which we were far from impressed about, and having to wait in the midday heat for well over an hour was no fun.

We wen t back to our hotel feeling quite depressed and so turned on the t.v and watched pretty woman, which cheered us both up!!

We were so so glad to be leaving, although we had a bit of trouble as the hotel tried to charge us double for a meal we had, but anyway we sorted it! The journey to Udaiper was 6 1/2 hours, the landscape on the way was so different, really green, mountainous, really beautiful! We are staying at Hotel Hill Lake and it is the nicest place we have stayed so far, really friendly, clean, and loads of character!

The view from the roof top cafe is out of this world, we sat out and ate overlooking the old city, palace, and 'james bond island' where some of octupusey was filmed.

The only thing I would compain about here is the call for prayer at 4am from the next door temple! Sooo loud!!

Today we went to the city palace and, we even walked there on our own, first time we have been able to go anywhere alone since arriving in India! The islands were closed as someone had booked it out for their daughters wedding (so not all Indian people are poor). This was a bit dissappointing. Later we are going to hit the market for some serious shopping ( - :

Tomorrow evening we are getting the train at 7.45pm to Mumbai (bombay) and will be there for one night before heading to Goa for some serious rest and relaxation. We have only heard good things from other travellers about Goa and so are both really looking forward to just hitting the beach and not moving for 8 days!!

Lots of love xxxx

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