Day 316 September 20th 2007, Shimla


After a lay in we spent much of the day exploring the town.  A very impressive statue of Gandhi is surrounded by some very British buildings.


What we weren't expecting to find were some very aggressive monkeys, initially they stare at you before barring their teeth. After a few weeks in India the cool weather here is refreshing.

Day 315 September 19th 2007, Kalka to Shimla



After very little sleep last night on last nights train to Bikaner which is best described as an experience I was not that keen to jump on another, especially as it was known as the "toy train". The 97km through the hills would be quicker on a real toy train with this one taking 6 hours. The average speed of about 16mph was largely due to the frequent stops for food which due to us wanting to avoid the s***ts we avoided, imagine being in an Indian restaurant, starving hungry and not eating anything.


The scenery was stunning and prompted an interesting conversation with one young Indian chap who was trying to convince me that India was the only country in the World with Mountains, there is national pride and then there is downright ignorance, this guy was full of both but arguing with him passed some of the journey. The rest of which was filled with pacing up and down unable to sit comfortably in my seat and avoiding the doors which people seemed quite happy to leave open on the off chance you wanted to jump 2,000ft down the side of a mountain.


Finally at a snails pace we rolled into Shimla, a town clingly to the side of a hill and fought our way through the ever enthusiastic porters. There is a strange feel to the place as it was built by the British as a retreat from the Indian Summer with streets of mock Tudor houses.

Hihlights: Stunning Scenary and colling down after the heat of Rajastan

Day 314 September 18th 2007, All quiet before the storm - Bikaner to Kalka


This atmosphere this morning couldn't have been more at contrast with that of the afternoon. Waking early we went on a short camel trek, through rural villages and then through sand dunes.


Above: Shelley had a cute baby camel in tow, which at one point decided to give Shelley's knee a big wet kiss. Very cute. Although I'm a fan of the water, the atmosphere on the edge of the desert was very relaxing as we slowly plodded along on our camels. I found it to be much more comfortable than riding a horse.


Above: One of the villages we passed. Below: After just one hour my camel decided enough was enough and pretended to pass out on the sand


Below: Shelley's camel with calf looking a bit more composed than mine when we stopped for a drink.


After returning from our trek very relaxed we chilled at the hotel for a while before catching a taxi to the railway station. Now this is where the day changed.

First of all I didn't know that in Hindi the word taxi means a 3 wheeled piece of rust, anyway it got us to the train station, the driver choosing some of the worst roads in town to get there. Train stations always seem to bring out the worst in a town and Bikaners was no exception. It all started quietly enough with a few people staring at us. We found some other Europeans and took refuge together. We soon had a crowd of people staring at us, it didn't help when I started taking on the phone, it was a recruiter from the UK telling about the latest and greatest pre IPO startups.

Then it all kicked off, there were a few street children begging for money, one of the locals gave one of them a rupee, perhaps for sport I don't know as it sent them all into a fight at my feet. After a few minutes of hitting each other the head with little wooden plaques of Hindu gods someone dragged the kids away by their ankles.

With the train pulling in we moved down the platform only into more trouble, a disagreement between drinks vendors turned into a fight with people whipping each other with their belts. I bundled Shelley onto the train to get out of the way before having to get off again as I thought we were on the wrong carriage.

After sprinting the length of the train we realised that we were in the right place to start with and had to run back. As usual there were about 3 people in our bunks and I won a popularity contest for removing them. After a while things settled down and the guard put everyone in their correct seats, worryingly though he kept asking me if I was ready, ready for what?

Given all the tricky locals about I didn't get much sleep, not that it would have been easy with all the noise anyway. I think we should have taken a camel train instead.

Highlights: A quiet camel ride in the desert

Day 313 September 17th 2007, Dust and more dust - Jodhpur to Bikaner


As we ventured further West and a bit to the North we found ourselves pretty much in a dusty and hot desert. What a time to be saying goodbye to our lovely driver Babu and his air conditioned car. Bikaner is pretty unremarkable but we needed to come here to catch a train North tomorrow. On route we skipped the opportunity to visit a temple dedicated to rats, apparently if you tread on one its 100 rupees fine.




Above: Photos of us with our driver Babu. On arriving at our hotel we found it to be a little quirky, Shelley insisted that our room, the Maharajah suite, was haunted. It was full of dusty old photos, the sort where the eyes follow you across the room. Below: The outside of our room


Highlights: Not taking the opportunity to tread on rats

Day 312 September 16th 2007, The blue city - Jodhpur


The fort of Meherangarh (below) is without doubt the most impressive we have seen in India. Built on the hills above Jodhpur it towers over the city proving a great view of the blue city (above) The blue paint applied to some parts of the city signify that the below to people from upper castes, the color also apparently repels insects.


The descendants of the family who originally built the fort now live in a nearby palace (below) They live in one third, a third is a luxury hotel and the other third is a museum. The maharajah who built the palace was in the RAF at one time, the palace was built to provide work for the local people during an extended drought.


Highlights: The magnificent fort

Day 311 September 15th 2007,Unique Pillars - Udaipur to Jodhpur


It was a shame to leave Udaipur, but there was still plenty to explore in Rajastan including the temple of Rankpur on the way to Jodhpur (That's right where the trousers are from) Arriving at the temple we found the monkeys to have the run of the place. Like thew cow, monkeys are also sacred animals in India.


The Hindu temple of Rankpur was built in 1439 and contains 1,444 stone carved pillars, each unique.


Above: The outside of the temple. Below: One of the stone elephants amongst the pillars, in the arches a mischievous monkey


Highlights: The temple was an impressive piece of architecture

Day 310 September 14th 2007, All creatures great and small - Udaipur


I was rudely awoken this morning by the ladies outside our window beating water from their washing. I'm not sure how clean this method gets their clothes, especially as they use the same part of the lake as everyone bathes in. Anyway the laundry from the hotel came back clean enough, a few t shirts had shrunk although it could be me that's expanded after all the great food we have enjoyed in India so far.


After the pedalo my next favourite form of transport is a horse, we took a short trek out through the villages in the surrounding hills. Interesting to see how people live here and there were plenty of friendly faces waving and shouting hello. The only hazard were the occasional water buffalo, apparently they are quite find of charging horses,


Here in Udaipur they start learning to ride camels early, it must have been this little guys first time on a camel as he wasn't too sure about it. His Farther was though as every photo in India has a price, about 10 rupees (15 pence). We stopped off at an animal hospital, India has so many wild animals in the town many come of worse for wear. The animal hospital had amongst its patients more dogs than I could count, a couple of monkeys and a herd of donkeys and sheep. There are around 50,000 cases of rabies worldwide each year, 50% of those occur in India. An important part of the animal hospitals work is to vaccinate as many animals as possible against rabies, at the same time the male dogs also get the snip.


Above: Us and our trusty steads at the end of the trek. After my backside came back to me we took a trip to the Monsoon palace, high above the city. So called as its where the Maharajah took refuge from the flood waters during monsoon season


Below: A view from the Monsoon Palace over the lake




We once again enjoyed drinks on the roof terrace watching the Sun set over the lake, very relaxing
Highlights: I'm not admitting that I actually quite enjoyed the horse riding.

Day 309 September 13th 2007, Lights, Action, Pedalo - Udaipur


Much of today was spent in video production mode, our friends Jo and Lorraine were getting married in London. Instead of sending a telegram we sent a video to be played at the wedding. Amazing what you can achieve with a digital camera, a few clothes from an Indian market stall and the lake palace (above) as the back drop. After some editing I found an Internet cafe, the owner wanted to charge me the price of a small Indian car to upload the file. The Internet cafe also doubled as a book shop so I sent the owner off looking for a book which I knew he didn't have ;-) whilst the video made its way over the Indian Internet to the UK.


After a tough morning creating our film festival winner we took to the water on our favourite form of transport the pedalo. We circled the lake palace, not too closely though for fear of being mistaken for hippie backpackers and being blown out of the water. Above is a view of the city palace which also borders the lake.

Highlights: A gentle pedal around the lake

Day 308 September 12th 2007, Bond is back - Pushkar to Udaipur



Somewhere in India some had or said that they were going to knock down a sacred Hindu bridge. As a result all the roads would be closed until 10:30AM today, as I cant read Hindi I had no idea if the newspaper article I was shown backed this up or not, but as all the other guests had also been told this we went with the lay in. It could have been an elaborate scam amongst the drivers but they seem an honest bunch so I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

Shortly after setting off we did find the road to be blocked by a government checkpoint and shortly after this our driver stopped the car and produced a bunch of bananas, ok not time for lunch yet buddy, however as he opened the window a family of monkeys descended upon the car. I guess it was like a scene out of Windsor safari park except that you could feed the animals. They didn't need much encouragement and when I opened the window a little too wide one nearly climbed in the car.

A few hours later we arrived at our Heritage hotel in Udaipur, again lakeside this time not on a holy lake but this time the film scene for the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy. Although the film is over 20 years old everyone is still trying to cash in on it. Restaurants and Cafes advertise daily showings and as we sat on the roof terrace watching the beautiful sunset the 007 theme tune drifted through the air.

Highlights: A stunning hotel room overlooking the lake

Day 307 September 11th 2007, The circus continues - Pushkar


Having had enough hassle in Jaipur with a thousand people all trying to sell us exactly the same piece of rubbish, we decided to ask the hotel to get us a guide. Asking the cow in the photo above probably would have been a better idea. I should have know after yesterdays performance that the circus was in town.


The tour started ok with a visit to the main temple in the town, a very colorful place a you can see. The streets of Pushkar is a little crazy, full of $5 a day back packers and the associated slime that is their service industry. There are some creative people about including the guy below who had set himself up as a moving pay per photo.


All was going well as we visited one of the ghats, out tour guide then disappeared and we found ourselves in the company of a supposed Hindi priest, we knew about the scam but went with it, thinking initially that it might be legit. We were reduced to laughter when holding a coconut, paint on our foreheads, the priest broke his Hindi chanting with "how much money will you give 1000, 2000, 5000 rupees" he was not impressed with my answer and starting going on about bad karma. He soon gave up and stormed , followed shortly afterwards by our guide who realised that he wouldn't be getting his share of the scam. The only surprise after this was that the guide didn't bother asking for his tip.


Above: A view of the ghats, Below: Sunset across the lake


Highlights: The colorful streets

Day 306 September 10th 2007, Idiots and Percentages - Jaipur to Pushkar


As we headed further West the terrain started to turn to desert and the camels started to outnumber the cars. Many of the camels were it seemed on auto pilot, their riders fast asleep on the carts they were towing.

Pushkar is a religious town to the South of Jaipur, built around a holy lake. There are 52 ghats here (steps leading down to the lake / river) Here become come to bathe in the holy water, wash their clothes and make a lot of noise. A noise that is only superseded by prayers coming from a loud and out of tune loud speaker. Being such a holy Hindu place no alcohol or meat is allowed. Were only here for a couple of nights so I should be ok.


Arriving at our hotel we found it was still being built, not agreeing the manager that this wouldn't be an issue we set of towards another on the lake shore. After getting past the guard (Above) a quick photo and a few rupees did the trick, we then had to deal with the comedy show that was the reception desk. It literally took about two hours to negotiate the rate, the problem - calculating what the rate plus 8% tax should have been. Even with the help of a calculator and myself trying to explain percentages as though I was talking to a five year old, it was impossible to speed things along. In the end the receptionist came up with a figure he liked and could reproduce more than once on the calculator, told me he had won (what the Mr Idiot contest), shook my hand and we got our room with a lake view.


Above: Our hotel. We settled down just in time on the balcony to enjoy the sunset and to cheer as a power cut took out the loud speaker, ah peace and quiet

Highlights: A stunning view across the lake

Day 305 September 9th 2007, Astrologers and Elephants - Jaipur


The city tour of Jaipur was a little more interesting than most revealing an insight into Indian culture not found in the guidebook. A large observatory of sun dials increasing in size and accuracy can be found next to the city palace, built several hundred years ago by a Maharajah I forget the name of, they were instantly consulted as soon as a baby is born, astrologers then compile their predictions. Today this is probably done on the Internet but probably still comes up with the same old rubbish. The huge sundials were an interesting distraction from the many temples and city's halls a tour usually consists of.


Next door was the city palace, nice architecture but yawwwwwwwwwwwn.


Below: A beautiful palace and gardens on the outskirt of the city.


A popular form of transport here in India is the elephant, ideal as it moves at about the same speed as the rest of the traffic. In Jaipur there is a significant area inside the city walls for housing the owners and their elephants.


Highlights: The Elephant convoy

Day 304 September 8th 2007, Bharatpur to Jaipur


The city of Jaipur is the capital of Rajastan, home to 2 million residents it is also know as the pink city. Here in India pink is a symbol of hospitality, in 1876 the whole city was painted this color to welcome The Prince of Wales (King Edward VII). Its a tradition that's stayed and many of the city's buildings are still pink.


During the Mogul times of forts sprung up in every province and from we've seen they certainly knew how to build a good fort. Perched high upon the hill above the city is the Amer Fort. Its in pretty good condition seeing as it was built in 1592, there is quite a bit of restoration work going on, using traditional methods and materials.


After a couple of hours at the fort we once again assured our driver that we didn't want to look at any carpets and arrived at our next home stay. This one belonged to the MP for Jaipur who I think is married to a member of the Royal Family. The house was full of hunting trophies including a full size tiger. Our room was home to the head of a cheetah, this made for a good prank when Shelley was in the shower. Managing to unhook the head from the wall, I then crawled across the floor into the bathroom with the cheetah head poking round the door. After the beating I got I still thought it was pretty funny. This really didn't help Shelley's perspective that the room was haunted.

Highlights: The Amer Fort