Agra to Jaisalmer

Steve and the kids enjoy 1st of sure to be many elelphant rides in Jaipur

A rare picture of all of us at the top of a tower in Jaipur

Jantar Mantar in Jaipur, an observatory built in the early 1700's

More astronomical stuff

A nice Palace on a lake in Jaipur

Steve's new elelphant friend

Udaipur is a very different place to previous Indian cities, set by the side of Lake Pichola it is a beautiful setting and the old town where we stayed has very narrow streets and is relatively clean, ‘You like rickshaw?’ was still a part of any walk around town and the danger of being run over by bikes and rickshaws was there but a bit more bearable then previous places.

Bob gets to drive a rickshaw!

Lovely Sarah and the lovely lake Pichola from the bridge in Udaipur

 It was also the location that the 007 film ‘Octopussy’ was filmed in and of course every hotel was showing the film and of course we had to watch it one evening, sitting on a rooftop terrace at a hotel eating curry and drinking beer, just like being at home really!

Some nice poo people!!

On from Udaipur we headed north west by taxi for a 6 hour journey  to Jodpur. The main attraction of Jodpur is the Mehrangarh Fort which sits high on a massive rock at the centre of the city. Our hotel balcony was slap bang in front of the fort with wonderful views at night of it all lit up.  Sarah was delighted to find our hotel room had a bath! Bobby enjoyed playing with the owners’ son whose main toys unfortunately were a box of matches and a box of fireworks! Boys eh?  Our room also came with a very large locust in situe, Sarah wore it on her back like a small pet one morning until Amber brought it to her attention…very calmly to avoid a panic.

Unfortunately on waking on our first morning, Steve had come down with a serious case of food poisoning, so was confined to the bedroom (and the close proximity of the bathroom) for that day.

Poor boy not well

Fortunately however Steve recovered enough the next day to venture to the fort which was pretty amazing and not only for the excellent views of the blue-painted buildings that make up the old town of Jodpur below.

Kids enjoying the audio guide at the fort

Lots of canons at the fort

the blue city below the fort

So we had an unscheduled extra day there and then headed west by bus to Jaisalmer.

Sarah and I enjoying a roof top beer in the old fort, Jaisalmer

The main gate of the old fort

Jaisalmer is a remote desert city at the western border of Rajastan and is known as the golden city due to its sandstone buildings. The first few days we stayed in the old city which is a 500 year old living fort and then escaped to the desert proper on an overnight camel safari. This involved an hour jeep ride out to a fairly remote location followed by an hour camel ride to the sand dunes where we would eat and sleep under the stars.

A couple of the camel boys were Bob’s size although probably twice his age and he enjoyed playing with them, particularly with the small dung beetles which roamed everywhere.

The camel safari

Steve and Bob's ride

Evening meal desert style

Morning after a night under the stars

Bob's camel boy

Amber loved her camel

We all enjoyed the remoteness and sleeping out in the open. Watching the sun set, the brightness of  the moon until it set and the stars become  bright as can be,  was a memorable experience. The camel ride , yes well neither Steve nor Sarah would have wanted to much longer, those saddles and the motion are worse than any bike saddle.

Returning to Jaisalmer, we then stayed for a few days at a really cool hotel with a swimming pool just outside the old fort, before heading back to Delhi for a 18 hour journey by sleeper train.

Pedal boat ride on the Gadi Sagar lake just outside Jaisalmer

The lake is crowded full of catfish which the kids loved feeding 

A one night stay in Delhi including a quick trip to the post office to pick up a new Kindle since Steve sat on the last one and broke it (thanks Nick and Tony for organising that!) and then a short flight south to Cochin in Kerala on India’s ‘Indigo’ airlines, which was absolutely great except they served no booze in flight, Sarah was disappointed.  Quite a long taxi journey brought us to Fort Cochin which was a lovely calm place – only a handful of traffic ambling about and no cow poo to tread in at all! We headed out to dinner and enjoyed beef and fish for the first time since in India – delicious!

Bobby gets an awful lot of attention in India, more so than the rest of us put together although we probably get our photo taken at least three times a day and probably more than we know about. It seems that a lot of Indians still have not seen a blonde white boy before, they are always wanting his photo or touching his head, asking his name and shaking hands. He is now getting fed up. Today he said ‘I hate this country and I hate the people’. He says now he doesn’t really mean it! Poor lad.

Manali to Agra

After the remoteness of the Spiti valley we were quite happy to be back in a larger town. More food choices to keep the kids happy, Pizza and pasta now on offer plus internet availability for updating the blog and organising our onward travels.

Leaving Manali we were back in the jeep for a 7 hour ride to Macleod Ganj, just north of Dharamasala. Macleod Ganj is a former British hill station left virtually deserted when the British left India and deemed an ideal place for the exiled Dalai Lama to set up home, along with thousands of other Tibetan refugees. The town is now mainly Tibetan and an interesting change from the Indian towns and villages we have seen. Unfortunately we were only scheduled to stay for one night, on advice from our driver, I think he didn’t feel comfortable there so we moved on the next day to Dalhousie.



A bunch of monks going our way

Dalhousie itself was a bit disappointing, again another former British hill station with three English churches, but hey, we can see English churches in England! Not much to do here but an hour or so drive from here we visited Khajjiar or ‘little Switzerland’ as they call it here. A bit of an exaggeration but nevertheless was a beautiful area of green open plain surrounded by mountains and pine forest.

Beautiful Pine forests in Kajiar

The open space at Kajiar

Onward from here we left our driver and took the morning bus to Amritsar. This was a typical Indian bus journey with hard seats, no aircon, crammed full of people, horns blaring almost non-stop for 6 or 7 hours. We arrived exhausted in a very busy, dirty and polluted city much much worse than Delhi, with laughably chaotic traffic. The only real reason for our visit here was the Golden Temple which we had been told is a definite must see.
And we did the Golden Temple and Steve had to wear a silly head scarf as bear heads not allowed.

The Golden Temple is a Sikh temple where everyone is welcome and should be treated as equal, you can stay there and there is free food constantly available. We passed on the room but thought we ought to try the food. Apparrently they feed 30,000 people every day.

Some bread with you Sari sir

Head coverings at the Golden Temple

Sarah sporting her new Indian outfit

The lunch rush at the Golden Temple



We left as soon as we could, by train back to Delhi.

This was our first trip by train in the standard 2^nd class seats, which was all that was available, and was surprisingly a pretty good trip and good value at about £6 for all of us for an 8 hour train ride.

Veg just like home

The red Fort in Delhi



Back in Delhi and a nice hotel – towels, soap and toilet paper provided no less!, and we did the Red Fort and picked up our lovely parcel of goodies from Angela, including an essential Indian Lonely Planet guide due to broken Kindle and even more essential book to read for Steve.

Next stop Agra and the Taj.

On the 24^th October we left Delhi by train, another 2^nd class train trip packed with Indian travellers, we arrived in Agra some 5 hours later. The Taj Mahal was very spectacular and would agree is one of the most beautiful buildings, even the kids quite enjoyed it.

Entrance to the Taj

The Taj Mahal, met all expectations

and again



Leaving Agra by train on the evening of the 26^th we arrived in Jaipur at 2am very tired after our train was delayed by 4 hours. Finally Sarah and I lost our patience with the Auto Rickshaw touts at the Jaipur station. For those haven’t  experienced it this is a constant annoyance in India, they see foreign tourists and just won’t take NO for an answer, one doesn’t want to be rude but in the end you have to say ’get lost’.  Luckily we had pre booked a lovely guest house and we arrived and we were well looked after and fell into bed.

The first morning in Jaipur I donned my head phones and took a stroll in peace!

Jaipur, the ‘Pink City’, well a very faded pink and not as nice as we expected, the highlight here was the Amber Fort just outside the city and for the kids (and Steve) and elephant ride. We had also arrived at the final few days of the Indian festival ‘Diwali’ which is a bit like our Christmas and Guy Fawkes night rolled into one. 48 hours of constant fireworks going off, sometimes felt like we were in a war zone, but the pretty lights adorning most buildings and the main streets made up for what would have been a fairly drab looking city.

We were unable to get a train from Jaipur to Udaipur, our next stop in Rajastan so it was to be a night bus to arrive early morning.