Jodhpur and Jaipur

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Thankfully we left Indore and arrived about 10pm in Jodhpur. This kid found Ciaran in the street and took us to a really nice and cheap hotel with, wait for it.......hot water!!! Yay!!

We popped up to their restaurant only to find the most amazing view of the Mehrangarh Fort. Beautiful. The next day we headed to a castle on the hill where the currentMaharaja lives. Then trundled along to the market by the clock tower which was pretty good too. To the avail of the shop keepers 'No we don't want any fucking spices!'

I have no idea what we done in the evening as it feels so long ago!! We did at some point decide to do a Camel safari, not one of Ciaran's ideas. We went for the jeep option as we couldn't be arsed to get a public bus, hassel! Our guide was a 7 year old (who we repeated questioned as to why he wasn't in school) and his older pony tailed brother. Who I may add selected Heather straight off so that he could straddle the whole way around. Now it was fairly hot so I had my scarf arounf my head to stop my face from burning, and to get that stylish desert look.... More camel stuff...It wasn't Lawrence of Arabia more dried out countryside. After going for a rather uneventful 2 hours we arrived at the family home and had some lunch, Heather took 40 pictures of a baby goat and hopped back on.



After the Camels had lunch I think they wanted to napped as Jodies was hungry and ate every bush on the way, escaping from the ponytail man 3 times. Heathers had to accomodate this (despite trying to bite her hand off) so kept kneeling to let this man get off and run after Jodie, was really funny to see Heather grasping onto her Camel for dear life. The way back was better as they got the Camels to canter, and lets face it we all have a need for speed!!

That evening we nursed our saddle sore with some pure veg food, a favourite of the groups.....

To get a really good look at the Blue City we ventured up top the previously mentioned fort, which was amazing! You can see all sides of the old town. The biggest bonus was getting an audio guide thrown in so for once we knew what we were looking at. (Pictures to follow....)

After Ciaran went to try India's best Lassi ( a milk based drink) which (as I just typed this a mouse ran passed my foot, great) erm which was a good lassi. Off we head to Jaipur overnight on the train.

First stop in Jaipur was this Monkey temple...more like Pigeon temple....Monkeys were not present. And it was a trek a lek!!!!! Like missons! Temple was not as good as others we have seen.

Amber fort was next on the agenda which was epic, really worth seeing.

On our hunt for dinner that night we ran into a pair of rickshaw drivers who seemed pretty sound so we asked them for a full day driving to the different sights and to pick us up in the morning. Now we slept in (after me and Ciaran had to check out at 6 am and save money by having one room) so were running late. Over breakfast we heard Barbie Girl and other Euro trash classics blearing from over the roof top. Little did we know it was our ride waiting in an old Ambassador. Ali and Sam (or Same Same as his dad was Thai) cranked up the tunes (all four of them on the CD) and off we sped to the City Palace. After this they took us to some other temple (not on the tourist map i may add) and finally to a help the world type place come textiles factory and shop. A few chais later we got persuaded into buying lots of things that we really didn't need and headed off for the train station.

Agra bound....! Taj Mahal here we come!!

A few notes on Inida.....

Everyone does wobble their head, be it for yes no maybe or my name is Bill. Can get highly confusing

Cows..are everywhere, not just in the fields! They eat most of the street rubbish

Stray dogs..follow the lead of the cows

Traffic and pollution are immense. I dead dog, 1 dead goat and a small child hit by a motorbike are all the casualties we have seen though. (I hope the kid was ok)

General Indians, want to take our photos at all times. Sometimes creepy men do this without asking. Mostly they will just hand you a child and whilst it is screaming in your arms take multiple snaps. Sometimes we are the first white people they have seen so no wonder

Food is good, apart from when you really fancy meat and there is none. Popadoms or Papads are rubbish here. As are some crisps which taste like 'outside' (according to Heather)

Beggars are not a many as I first thought some though literally rip your heart out, like today we saw a kid with stumps for hands and feet shuffling between the heavy traffic

Trannies...are hilariously scary. They clap so you can hear them comming (we pretend to be asleep) supposidly they curse you if you dont give them money

Peace out for now XXXX

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