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Published: December 20th 2007
Janine up de hill
Very pleased with herself Janine is for having got up de hill looking out over Pushkar belowPushkar was jolly good and chilled out. We got up at 4:30am to leave Pushkar, drive over a big hill and then leave on a 6:15am train South from Ajmer. On arrival at the Ajmer station we were greeted with the sentence "Sorry sir but your train is now leaving in 10 hours time" - not the words you want to hear at 5:30am but at least it was delivered with a smile..........
Hence we did jump into a rickshaw for an early morning dash across town to the bus station and onto a local bus for an impromtu 7hr bus ride south. It was a very interesting ride - our moustachioed (the moustach is the way to go in India) and fearless driver with a permanent grimace swerved, wobbled, jerked, bounced and bumped us south through the very lovely mainly undulating and slightly mountainous Rajasthan countryside. Bus drivers have two hands fro driving in India - one hand for holding their mobile phone and the other for (constantly) beeping their horn - occasionly one of the hands is given over to steering. Thankfully our driver 'safely' negotiated his way down through the hairpin bends to our destination of Udaipur.
Down de hill
Having a nice cup of refreshing hot lemon and honey tea after getting back down de hill (background) Udaipur was by far and away our most favourite city destination so far yes indeed. It's set on a couple of very fetching lakes (one with a palace and a hotel in the middle) and surrounded by big lovely hills. It's also where the 1982 blockbuster Octopussy was filmed - you'll remember Mr Bond racing through streets in a rickshaw and going to meet a lady friend in a motorised crocodile. The people there are very very proud of this fact indeed - many of the hotel rooms have a 007 room (as opposed to just 7), virtually every restaurant shows the Octopussy film every night (yes of course we watched it) and the Maharaja even bought himself the Rolls Royce used in the film and it's his favourite motor.
Then moving on further south to Mumbai and very nice it was too. Now we've left the north behind it's hot in the night as well as the day now and it's a bit sweaty too - lovely jubbly. In Mumbai we did a walking tour of the sites and we checked out Chowpatty beach where the locals hang out of an evening. We also put our glad
Monkey
You've got to count your change with these taxi drivers in India - they're a bunch of cheeky monkeys..... rags on and went out for some posh nosh where the bollywood stars hang out at a very nice indeed rooftop restaurant. After that we did dancin in a super duper nightclub. There was something for everyone in their. For the Janineous there was dancin music - Brian Adams summer of 69 was very popular with the locals (it was mainly locals in there by far) but not as popular as Billy Joel Uptown Girl but when Right Said Fred came on the place went crazy! - and we're really not joking. For Steve there was Man City v Bolton on live and what a great game it was too - and Boro won again in a thrilling 1 nil away victory - away the lads.
We've started to getten used to this warm all day lark so we've travelled right down to the very bottom of India now to the most southern state of Kerala which is very warm, chilled out big time, green green green and water everywhere - natural waterways canals etc. But more on that next time!
We'll try and download some piccies now. It's difficult to know when we'll get a good internet
Phantom II Rolls Royce
This bad boy was the fella used in Octopussy connection so if we don't write before then have a merry christmas to all those who celebrate it.
cheerio for now
Janine and Steven
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Alex
non-member comment
Turkey curry
Merry Christmas to you too. Hope you have a good one.