It's been 10 days since the last update. We've covered a fair bit of ground in that time and have now completed the final stretch of traveling before it's game over (in 2 days time!!).
We spent a night in Chennai (on 28 Jan) as a stop off on the way back from the Andaman Islands, and popped into the Government Museum while we were there. I have to say we weren't expecting such an impressive display of stuffed animals and skeletons. Everything from snakes and rats preserved in big jars to stuffed bears,
monkeys, peacocks and a whole whale skeleton suspended from the ceiling. There were geology and archeology sections among others, so it was a proper educational school trip!
From Chennai we flew up to
Udaipur via
Mumbai (29 Jan); shame we didn't have time to stop over there. We got a train into town about an hour from the airport and a guy on the street led us up the last stretch to our guest house through the winding lanes. Was the cutest little guest house run by a really sweet old couple and their children. Apparently it's the oldest guest house in
Udaipur; it certainly looked run down enough to be. But apart from the peeling paint and cell-like rooms, the wooden shutters, pretty courtyard and fantastic view from the rooftop over Lake Palace (
Octopussy Lake) made it a really lovely place to stay.
Udaipur was a cute little town, lots of winding lanes, rooftop cafes, beautiful lake views and lots of shops! The only annoying thing was the constant hassle from shop owners and guys on the street. Sounds a bit miserable, but when almost every person you pass in the street asks you where you're from and returns your answer with "lovely
jubbly", "look in my shop!" or "rickshaw?".......you get a bit sick of saying, NO shop, NO rickshaw!!!! Anyway, we took a trip round a few of the sites (memorials, temples and parks) and then up a mountain to Monsoon Palace. We also had a mosey round the City Palace and saw a
Rajasthani dance show. The dancing was pretty impressive. There were about 5 different sections; including a puppet dance, a group dance (which looked fabulous with all the ladies performing their routine in their fancy, brightly coloured dresses and ornate jewellery) and finally a lady who balanced more and more pots on her head, until she had 10 of the things piled high while she swayed and bopped
about (admittedly a little slower once she had the full stack on!).
We booked up all our train tickets in
Udaipur for the rest of our trip and then headed from there to
Pushkar on the 1st of Feb. The 5.5 hour train took us to
Ajmer, where we got a bus for the last half hour to
Pushkar. The bus was err, cosy!
Teg had a little friend using her shoulder as a seat for the trip. We bumped into a couple in
Udaipur that we met around Christmas time in
Ooty and ended up being on the same same train and bus from
Udaipur to
Pushkar. They'd got chatting to a guest house owner on the bus so we all got a ride to his place. Turned out to be really lovely and pretty cheap so that was cool.
Pushkar was like a more chilled out, quiet and friendly version of
Udaipur. Much less hassle and even cooler shops! They don't have any auto-rickshaws in
Pushkar so we were able to tick off another 2 modes of transport: cycle-rickshaw and motorbike. It wasn't actually the first time for the latter, but it was the first time we'd been on one together; plus the driver (still not a patch on the bikes carrying a family of 5 I guess). We stayed in
Pushkar for 3 or 4 days. Did a fair bit of reading and tea drinking, also had a stroll around the edge of town passed a few hills (or ghats), fields, camels, cows,
monkeys, goats and dogs. There's a beautiful lake at the centre of the town with
steps leading up from all around to temples, houses and cafes. One morning when we were walking through the market to get some breakfast, we got scammed by a couple of dodgy
priests. We'd heard about them, but hadn't really clocked when they first just offered us some rose petals to sprinkle in the Holy Lake. They led us off to the lake and ran through a whole string of prayers about our families and lo and behold, asked us for a donation for the monks and charities at the end of it. When I offered him 40 rupees he gave me this look of utter disappointment and basically said, "do you really expect 40 rupees to cover the good wishes and prayers for all 20 members of your family??". I was having none of it and luckily
Tegan didn't hand over the 300 rupees that her 'priest' was suggested she donate. So off we went with our red paint and rice smeared all over our foreheads.
On the 5
th Feb we headed on to Jaipur on the train. We met a couple of lovely Indian families on the journey and
they took about 20 photos of us with various different combinations of family members; husbands, wives and children. Certainly added some light amusement to the trip. And but more photos when we got off at the station; by which point we decided it was only fair to get our cameras out and have a go as well.
Our hotel had arranged for a car to pick us up in the evening when our train
arrived at Jaipur station. We hadn't
realised that we'd come out the side exit and the car was waiting round the front. We'd been told to wait by the
rickshaw rank, which we did, but it took a while for the guy to find us (as there was more than one rank!). During the quarter of a hour or so trying to track down our lift, we had about 6 different guys trying to convince us that they were our pick-up and that the car was just down the road. One of them even held a phone to my ear with a guy on the line saying "yes, your car is here, OK?". Wasn't helped by the fact that we couldn't remember the name of our guest house at first. One guy was holding a board up for a different guest house and when we said it wasn't ours, he came back about 5 minutes later with a different guest house name to give that a try! Basically, it a was a circus! Anyway our guy finally found us and we promptly
leapt into his car. Luckily the frantic, near kidnapping incident, was rewarded by the most beautiful guest house just up the road. A really lovely, friendly family and a beautiful, spacious room; with sheets AND toilet roll!? Rare luxuries for us (well, for free anyway). And for just under 4 quid each.
We only had a couple of nights in Jaipur as our time was running out. So for the day we were there we checked out the City Palace. We went the whole hog and did the audio-tour; which was actually well worth it as we've certainly
traipsed around a few palaces and temples without really knowing what we're looking at and the history behind things. After that we tried to find an
Airtel phone shop to try and sort out my barred
sim; having previously phoned 10 different customer service numbers and finally being told we needed to go into a shop to verify some details. It turned out our cycle-rickshaw driver didn't
actually have a clue where the shop was. So he eventually gave up and dropped us off somewhere else, charged us more than the agreed price (even though he hadn't taken us where we wanted to go) and transferred us to an auto-rickshaw to whom we then had to pay even more money. Well we made it to the shop in the end and surprisingly enough they were unable to sort my phone out anyway.
From Jaipur we took the train to Agra on 7 Feb at 6.00am (well 7.00am by the time it left -
could've had an extra hour in bed). After 5 hours on the train, we checked into our stinking, damp-ridden guest house room which stank of raw eggs walking round the back to our room. Luckily it was only for one night so we didn't mind too much. We spent the afternoon taking in the view of the
Taj Mahal from our guest house roof top and made plans for the next day of sightseeing.
So yesterday we got up for sunrise to go and see the
Taj Mahal. Must
admit it was slightly overrated going for sunrise. Part of the reason for going early was apparently to miss the queues, but there was more of a queue at 6.15am than when we came out a couple of hours later. Anyway, it was good to have got up early and have the rest of the morning to do our other sites. The
Taj was indeed very
spectacular. Really beautiful. And also really lovely gardens surrounding it. Bit cold at that time of the morning though!? After breakfast, we headed off to the Baby
Taj, the park at the back of the
Taj Mahal and then the Fort. Then in the evening we got the train back to Delhi. Very strange being back here again after 2 and half months!
Just being kicked out of the
internet cafe so will sign off.
Hope all good at home. Back in a couple of days! Hope it's not snowing then?
