Getting to the end of any journey is always sad, I just wish that I had more time to spend with new found friends than I actually got. Again another killer train journey.

After finding out the day before that our scheduled train had been cancelled it was further delayed when we got to the station, when we finally did get to Kolkata we didn’t really get much time to look around because we were all very tired and wanted some rest. Plus we were all very busy planning some presents for our tour leader.

The day went well, I don’t know how else to describe Kolkata as a cleaner than usual town (as far as Indian cities go) while there were bits and pieces of what I had seen through the last month, the wide flat roads didn’t seem rite, and there wasn’t much of a smell and…no cows. It was a nice place but just lacked that interesting streak about it, I guess that I was just too tired from all the travelling. I was done, but more the prospect of leaving the group that you have travelled with for the last 22 days just seemed more depressing.

One of the holiest places in the Hindu religion and so an important place for the majority of Indians, it was a bit of a tough time getting to Varanasi for us, with a cancelled train (and of course no announcement of cancellation) while on the platform we would have been lost if not for out fearless leaders who was able to somehow organise us to get on the train that was actually on the track all without us loosing a beat. It is moments like these that I’m glad that I joined a tour group, too think that I was going to go it alone, what would I have done in this situation, could I have been stuck at the train station overnight or until I worked out that the train wasn’t coming.

Again a well chosen hotel that offered us excellent views most of the way down the right Ganges we relaxed a bit before starting a short orientation walk so show us the sights that had to be seen. I found Varanasi an interesting town - and this might sound weird to you - but it smelled so much more different to other towns that I had been in, there was the rubbish, the cows and the sewerage all the usual stuff but there was something else different, I couldn’t pick it then and I still can’t pick it now. I do know that I haven’t seen so many cows about the place in India yet.

The 5am cruise down the river Ganges was the most significant event that we did which proved to be quite interesting. The first pass that we made was quite some distance from the river edge, but on the way back we came a lot closer, this provided a much more intimate view of the bathing, but I just wasn’t comfortable with taking photos so close to people. I am sure that if someone walked into my bathroom and starting taking photos of me while I was showing I would be pretty pissed off. On another note, did you know that they actually catch fish on the river, I assume that they eat it to, but I don’t like to think about this because of the septic state that the river is in. What with all the dead animals, rubbish and what ever is put in there.

Some bad news at the moment, we were told that all trains to Kolkata has been cancelled because of flooding in the area so nothing is going that way by land, our options could have been a different train or a plan either way it was going to cost us more money. We were all worried throughout the day until we finally found out that we indeed had to take a different route, that it would cost us more money and that we would have to leave much much later than expected. We were supposed to be out of Varanasi by about 6pm instead we left at about 11:30pm for a 12:30am train.

On the plus side, the storm hard actually moved up into the country towards us resulting in the biggest storm that I have witnessed to date. If you can imagine me standing on a roof watching lighting roll acorss the sky, it was hours and hours of fun I tell you.

Of all the places that you should go to while in India, Agra would be right at the top of the list (Varanasi next) for one obvious reason - The Taj Mahal.
The place that we stayed was a mere 50 meters walk from the east gate of the Taj complex so getting there was not a problem. The whole area is dominated by the Taj Mahal everthing from the people, shops, transport and food. So it should be, in a lot of ways it is hard to describe in a manner that would do it justice it just has to bee seen to be understood why it is so popular.

We also went to the Agra for and explored that, which was interesting to see because the design and architecture is different to the structures in Rajasthan - where here it has more variety in building styles which influence from all religions a races.

These are pictures from Fatehpur Sikri (I think)

I am somewhat confused as to why Bharatpur was put on the list, we were told that it was a recent change in the tour schedule. Bharatpur is famous for it’s world heritage bird sanctuary, that unfortunately due to poor rains it hasn’t seen much wildlife, but as I was to find out later this was somewhat incorrect. Based on this information I decided that it would indeed be a good time to just sit and relax and take a break from the travel.

There isn’t much to report, I didn’t do much because there wasn’t that much to do besides relax by the pool and drink beer which we did. As I did find out later a trip to the sanctuary would have been a good idea because there were plenty of other animals as well as birds to see.

We only stayed one day and we were off again moving on the next bus.

After the slow pace of the last couple of towns that we went to it has been a change to get into Jaipur, it is a busy busy town.  The bus ride is was supposed to be on a good private tour bus, suffice to say the bus ride wasn’t fantastic which wasn’t the problem the problem lay is having to tip the bus driver for a comfortable ride, which it certainly didn’t warrent.

But at least there has been plenty to do, unfortunately our hotel was rather far away to make it easily accessible by foot so an auto-rickshaw was needed. It is almost like they are a necessary burden, because they are needed to get anywhere but I am just sick have having to deal with them and the bargaining and the lies but luckily our tour leader is able to get some good prices for us or at least tell us what something should cost.

Sadly enough, even though there is plenty to see and do little is worth the time and effort. The city place was rather over priced and the only attraction that was interesting was the palace of the winds.

One thing that confuses me about India is that the most trafficked roads in each city which seems to see hundreds of vehicles (2, 3 & 4 wheel) are so badly maintained it like going on consistent speed bumps, there are pot holes everywhere. They would put some country roads to shame. But then again this is India.

There were two birthdays on this tour so it was decided that we would hit an Indian disco or as they call it. Our tour leader had a mate who helped run a disco, so most of the day was spent running around organising the mini party, dinner and after party.
We went to a restaurant the specialises in chicken and I had the best butter chicken that I tasted, but I’m sure that isn’t interesting to anyone but me.
On to the club, being a Friday night we unfortuanly got the after work male crowd, which made things a little odd. But the night turned out great, myself as usual had a bit to much to drink and made a fool of myself on the dance floor, while most others where having fun I decided that I looked cool going waving my arms and legs. I clearly didn’t but who was to know, who else in the club would see me again (well besides the other 11 people in the group). Obiously everyone tried their hand at the Indian dancing, it is energetic and different to what we do that I found it impssible to keep in time with what they were doing.

Everyone is the group is looking forward to some rest and relaxation after the pace that we have been going on this tour, I am too. The next stop Bharatpur has a pool and not much else to do.

A very holy town but nothing to be excited about, admittedly it was one of the direst towns that I have been to and rather unexciting, except for one thing - shopping.

The multitude of shopping that is available in Pushkar is enough to fill one day, which is essentially what I did for the most of the day was shopping, I think that I did buy enough presents but then when trying to fit everything in I noticed that I had bought too much.

As with most places that attracts tourists there will be those that offer scams, two of which that I almost fell for where the gypsy girls who would come up to you and talk to you, I thought that they were friendly locals. I wasn’t going to be rude to them so I did talk but then something weird happened they tried to drag me off somewhere and buy them either drinks or clothes. That’s when I realised what was going on and walked away.

The second thing that happened was with beggar children as they usually do. I had one boy come up to me and beg for me to buy him something to eat, I thought that this would be a good idea and started to follow him and then I was watching him and realised that his clothes were fine and he didn’t look malnourished at all in fact he looked perfectly healthy.
I felt bad refusing him but then felt better when I saw him sitting and eating later that day with what seemed like friends.

Didn’t take any photos of in Pushkar, probably should have though.

While the bus ride to Udaipur was not without its dangers, travelling on a narrow country road with other vehicles while the bus you are on is consistantly trying to overtake trucks can be hair raising at times. But we got through and a short auto-rickshaw ride later we were in old Udaipur.

The town is great there is plenty to do and nothing to do as well, the people are relaxed and atmosphere is typically Indian. Every restaurant of course advertises that they have the best rooftop view of the lake and that they can play Octopussy if requested. The movie being the 007 film that was filmed there, which I might say is really really cheezy.

The town didn’t have too many tourist attractions but that didn’t matter too much as I just liked lazying about but anyway we went to the city place, a temple, the monsoon palace and for a boat ride on the lake.

The arrival in Jodhpur wasn’t that great, only because I was feeling terrible. In the end I was sick and suffered stomach trouble which left me in the room for the next day. Which is a shame because I wanted to see the fort and how it overlooks the blue city.

It was a rather boring day accompanied by a little bit of food, lots of water and rest. By the afternoon I was feeling much better and as a result was able to go out to the fort, I didn’t get to see the inside but I spent a bit of time on the outside and watched the sunset.

The view from the top of our accommodation was amazing we were somewhere inside the fort very high up and we had the fantastic view of the rest of Jaisalmer all the way to the border, so much so that we could hear the military plans every morning doing their rounds which became a consistent annoyance and a alarm clock at the same time.

From the first day that we got there I made it a point (well for some reason I couldn’t sleep past 7am anyway ) to get up early and watch the town slow come into full light. Walking around down was hard at first because it was different to Delhi but the same in someways, it has obviously been well travelled due to the amount of people that knew where we were staying and that we were the second or third intrepid group in town.

It was also my chance to start buying clothes, I didn’t do too badly in the style stakes it was the haggling that let me down. On our last day we were to head out on the camel safari, which I was quite excited about because I thought that it would be tons of fun to try to race a camel…well I was completely wrong.

The ride into our island of desert was quite fun and unique experience.
Having dinner & gypsy show in the desert was fun and different.
Sleeping out under the stars I won’t forget.
Waking up groggy, uncomfortable and sandy I could have done without.

The ride back was terrible and I couldn’t wait for it to stop, I did feel well and I knew that something was wrong and hoped that it would pass by the time we got to the next town

I was more careful about the hostel that I choose in Delhi, thinking about it later it was both a good and bad decision. I was still not interested in spending too much money so I found a place called hotel Vivek in Paharganj it cost 400 Rupee per night and right in the middle of the tourist district plus it had a great restaurant on the roof.

I started off in Delhi working out what I would see with the tour group on Sunday and what I could see by myself. After some fluffing about I eventually hired a car for the day and was able to see (1) India Gate, (2) Lotus Temple, (3) Humayun’s Tomb and (4) Lodi Garden I also saw the (5) Red Fort on my own.
(5) (3) (2) (4) (1)
By now it was Sunday and I had checked into the Hotel Grand President to meet the people would would become my travel companions for the next 22 days. I assumed that we were going to get to know each other fairly well because we had a 22 hour overnight train journey to look forward to.

On Monday of the train journey we went to see the Jama Masjid in Old Delhi, walk through the markets and enter the Gurudwara Sis Ganj (Sikh Temple) to learn a bit about them.

Despite the length of the train journey I quite enjoyed it, I think it was because I also got to know everyone a little more, I’m a sucker for travel stories and everyone at at least a few because they seemed to have travelled much more than I have. Plus a train journey like that offers so many good photo opportunities.