Blogs from Rajasthan, India, Asia - page 349

A 5:30AM bus was never going to be popular with anyone, and I approached my bucket bath with the same shivering lack of enthusiasm that the gateman displayed when I woke him up to let me out of the hotel. I had to pay Rs 10 to the conductor in order to guarantee safekeeping of my rucksack in the boot (=trunk, US people) of the bus, and I have absolutely no doubt that it would have gone walkabout without that insurance. Finding my seat proved to be more of an ordeal than I would have thought possible. The bus was arranged with one column of seats, then the aisle, then a set of two-seaters. Above each of the columns of seats were sleeper berthes, though they more resembled medicine cabinets. First, I was unable to see ... read more

After a remarkably comfortable night's sleep, with only a cold nose and ears to indicate the low temperatures that had been reached, I heard someone banging on a pan at about 6:45AM. In my half-awake state, I took this as a signal to turn over and snooze for another 15 minutes, but unfortunately it was meant to indicate that sunrise was imminent and we should get out of our tents ASAP. So I missed sunrise, but Kesh said it was less spectacular than the sunset had been. Breakfast consisted of a freshly cooked omelette with some chai, and at about 10AM Andy, Kesh, and I said our goodbyes to Susan and Steve, who were staying out in the desert for another day. One of the camel carts was emptied and all our bedding thrown in, which ... read more

I checked out this morning, though I will be back again tomorrow night. I think the owner was concerned that I might meet my end in the desert, leaving him out of pocket (though he did have most of my luggage in storage, which could have been flogged for a few rupees). My bill for the week was roughly $100, which for a room and 2 meals a day is more than acceptable. My auto driver to Vijay's seemed to have come directly from the same training scheme used by New York cabbies - he happily accepted me as a passenger, then turned out to have no clue where the place was. On a fixed price trip, though, this only wastes time rather than money too. Fortunately some other bods had turned up for the safari ... read more

I started this entry about a week ago, but never finished it. We're in Darjeeling now, eating Momos (tibetan dumplings) and staring at Mt. Kanchendzanga (8560m - 3rd highest in the world). Not a bad place to be. A little cold by indian standards (5 degrees), but i'm sure I won't get any sympathy from any of you back home. So here we go... My Sis and I spent 3 days on the beach at Puri, an Indian tourist destination on the east coast. It's gorgeous there. Not much there, but the food was unreal. The fish was unbelievable. From there, we went on a tour of Konark and Bhubaneswar. Bhubaneswar was the highlight of my trip so far. We went to Udaygiri caves, which has a bunch of monkeys running around. They act as de ... read more

Unfortunately the last week I have been incommunicado - firstly due to a camel safari, then due to being afflicted by slothlike Internet connections in Jaisalmer, and then due to some mysterious problem that meant I couldn't access the blogging site even though I could access everywhere else. I seem to have surmounted all these problems here in Jodhpur at Manish's Internet cafe, so let's see if we can get up to date ... Wow - December already. And to mark the beginning of Advent I spent almost the entire day in the Internet cafe, firstly sorting out my SIM (after 15 attempts to charge it using the so-called "Easy Charge" method, I was advised to buy a coupon instead, which worked first time but gave me about 50% more talk time than I really wanted ... read more