Nov 05

We arrived in Pushkar by bus as there are no trains, it's in the opposite direction to Delhi and although we've done a little backtracking it's nice to be away from Jaipur.

Pushkar is a very small, very religious town based around a lake that's supposed to have appeared when Brahma dropped a lotus flower. The pace of life is very slow and relaxed, and we no longer have to worry about street sellers trying to rip us off.

We haven't done an awful lot other than sit around, read our books, drink tea and relax. There are plenty of places to eat, and we've had some great meals, although I think I'm missing a few vitamins as I've picked up quite a bad cold. Tabi, the travelling pharmacy, has given me all kinds of pills so I expect it will be gone in a few days.

We've made plans to head off to Delhi tomorrow, this involves taking a bus to the nearest big town and then taking a train from there. Neither of us are looking forward to Delhi as we have preferred the small towns to big cities, but we only have to spend 2 nights there before our flight to Bangkok.

Tabi's updated her blog, which you can read here.

We left Udaipur for Jaipur a couple of nights ago on another overnight train. As Udaipur has only narrowgage tracks, and Jaipur only broadgage, half way through the journey they lifted the carriage off the wheels of one track and dropped it onto another. Although this is much easier than changing trains, it did rather take us by surprise!

We've not enjoyed Jaipur very much, despite hearing lots of positive comments before we came. We've been stalked by a crazy rickshaw driver who waits for us outside the hotel, and even came to our door and woke us up yesterday. Even when we manage to escape him, the town's even fuller than Mumbai with over forcefull sellers who find it hard to take no for an answer.

Yesterday we were chatting to one of the locals, saying how we've found Jaipur full of people wanting to sell by employing unpleasant methods. He spent about an hour telling us how this wasn't the case and how open and friendly the locals are. We were almost convinced until by the end of the conversation he was trying to sell me a container full of jems that he said I could have taken to England and sold at a large profit. Had I have bought them, they would almost certainly have been worthless.

So today, in about an hour, we're heading for Pushkar, a nice small little town (14k pop) about 4 hours by bus from here. Hopefully we'll find that nicer!

We did a lot of touristy things today, with our rickshaw driver Billau. Billau has 7 books filled with nice comments from other travellers and was keen to show them to us. For some reason, he didn't ask us to write anything.

We visited a zoo, and met with some childen on a school trip. They seemed more interested in following us around than looking at the animals, and we didn't stay long because of the heat.

Next was a cemetry - very interesting, up to a point, but I was rather bored and the heat made me rather lathargic. After this was a museum. After selling us the tickets, the ticket seller ran out of his booth and into another booth just by the entrance where he checked our the validity of our tickets before letting us in. We watched a puppet show, performed by the versitile ticket seller, and on leaving had our tickets removed by the ticket seller/master puppetter who had somehow now morphed into a security guard.

We were rather tired, so headed back to the hotel for a quick nap, before heading out for some dinner, at a beautiful hotel overlooking the large semi natural and semi man made lake that sits at the centre of the town. They had a good menu, including some English dishes so I was finally able to have a good feed without fear of nuts.

The train journey was quite enjoyable. According to the booking list we had an entire four bed compartment to ourselves, but we were joined by an Indian couple who came and sat with us keep us company and to stop 'nasty people' from sitting there.

They were on their way to Udaipur to visit some of their extended family. They talked about their life in India - they live with their two daughters and sons in law as well as their grandchildren and servant in a 3000sq ft house just outside the city. Indians think nothing of asking questions that most in the west would shy away from such as salary and religious information. He was shocked that on a Westerners salary I was unable to save anything because of he high living costs in London, I said this was because Tabi costs a lot and he noded, knowingly. ;-)

People we met on the train

We arrived in Udaipur at about 7am and promptly found an autorickshaw to take us to our hotel. The hotel is nice and has an internet cafe and a normal cafe upstairs. This place is very different to the cities. The streets contain as many stray cows and dogs as they do people, and shopkeepers would rather stop us for a chat than rip us off. The local women don't scowl at Tabi, and no one stares at us as we go by.

We had a quick breakfast when we arrived, followed by a short nap. Then we found an autorickshaw to drive us out to a local villiage where we hopped on a camel and were shown around. The inhabitants sang songs to us from inside their cow dung huts, but I was too distracted by the buckarooing camel to take too much in.

Mud Hut

Villagers performing for us. Not a very well composed photo, but have you ever trried taking a photo from on top of a camel??

That's us and the camel. (Top row: Tabi & Rob, Bottom: Camel)

We then went to a local 'animal reserve', the name demonstrating a remarkable lack of self knowledge, as there were no animals to be seen. It still had some spectacular views, and we got some nice pictures.

We've just booked a ticket to our next stop, Udaipur, which is about 250km North East. The day's problems are finding a cash point to pay the hotel bill and finding somewhere to stay tomorrow night. The train is another overnight sleeper, which saves a few quid on hotel bills. With a population of 300,000 Udaipur is the smallest town we'll visit in India, but sounds the most relaxing.

Route so far

We spent most of yesterday afternoon with an English lecturer at the city's university. He told us all about India, and in return we told him all about London.

I ate a nut last night, which caused quite a bad reaction. Ironically the nut wasn't contained in an exotic indian dish, but in a plate of good old egg and chips.

So there you go, that's about it. What can I say, it's a slow news day. I guess that's what happens when you don't get up until 3pm! We're off to get some breakfast, lunch and dinner.