Rob in Pushkar

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Hi again

I'm in Pushkar at the moment, one of India's most holy cities, with hundreds of temples surrounding one lake. It looks pretty cool, but apart from the lake and all the shops I don't feel like there's that much to it. I've managed to get hold of a very nice photo album and some Aladdin pants as we're all going to wear different coloured ones for our elephant trek in Jaipur! I think we're going to make a joint CD of all our photos in Delhi and I'll print some off, but I really won't have the time to upload any onto here again whilst I'm out, I had much more time on my hands in places like Goa and Varkala.

Before coming to Pushkar we spent 2 days in Udaipur. It was nowhere near enough time. It was full of various lakes, one with a palace seemingly floating on top whilst there were also hills all around the city. Our hotel had a great view of it, and we could have spent a week there. We got to see around some spice markets before being taken to a cemetary of various Hindi kings that looked really impressive. Then we went to some place on top of one of the surrounding hills and got to see over the lakes and the city, that looked very Arabian, in fact all the cities in Rajasthan do probably because it's desert. Later we went up to a hilltop fort to see the sunset, then the next day we swam in one of the clean lakes, but we didn't stay in long, there are apparently crocodiles in there! We also saw round the the big palace that was very impressive, and some of the girls went on a camel ride although me, Colin and Nicole were pretty tired and we're all going an elephant ride in Jaipur anyhow, so we decided not to go. Then we got a night bus here. We got sleep from about 8-12 this morning before seeing Pushkar. We went tot he lake, got blessings and had chalk on our forehead and now we're going to take it easy and get an early night before getting a short bus (3-4 hours) tomorrow morning to Jaipur, a supposedly pink and colourful city. Our train to Delhi is at 5am on the 19th. Once we're in Delhi the bulk of the travelling is over, we're not going to hop all over the place in the Himalayas. We're already thinking about our group breaking up in about 6 days, but I guess it was inevitable. Anyway, I hope you're all okay, I'm looking forward to seeing people again soon.

Rob.

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