Hi Everyone!
India was our port of call when we were last in touch, absolutely crazy country altogether! Flew into New Delhi at first and we've travelled through almost all of Rajasthan - the North western region -since.
We were pleasantly surprised with our first experience of Delhi, no awful smells or real culture shock. It's grand, a little mental like everywhere but not the terrible place we expected!
There doesn't seem to be any rules of the road here at all, they drive on any side, overtake on bends, don't use lights or indicators half the time, and to top it all off the cows just wander freely all over the place causing havoc! And since they're sacred in India, you can't touch them, so if they feel like standing in front of your car for half the day, you just have to let them!
We stayed in a lovely hotel in Delhi for two nights - en suite, marble floors, 100 tv channels, mini-bar (Mickey was in his element!), 24 hour room service! And it wasn't expensive either -about 12euro (we didn't have to pay for the first night - long story!).
So after seeing Delhi's mad markets where Mickey nearly had a heart attack with all the people following us begging and trying to sell us stuff etc. And you could hardly breathe with the amount of people and mad stuff cooking, we got roped into taking a tour of Rajasthan with our own personal driver! It worked out really well as all our hotels were booked in advance and we didn't have to carry our bags at all and Shri (our driver!) was at hand to bring us wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted! Nice one!
Anyway, first off we went to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal and a massive Red Fort, but nothing else! So we just stayed there one night and went to see the Taj at 6 oclock in the morning to watch the sunrise. No sun that day but it was still magnificant, like something out of a film. We took loads of photos and posed like princess Di!!! Like eejits!!!
After Agra we arrived in Jaipur, a gorgeous city and the capital of Rajasthan where we stayed in a palace hotel run by local royals! There we went to this massive fort called Amber Fort miles up on a mountain, reached only by elephant!!! It was unbelievable!
Loads of shopping was done at the markets by Shona and myself, poor Mickey was not impressed! It's so cheap here, I got a skirt and top for 2euro total! Each place we went we saw nicer stuff and then just had to buy them too!
The nicest place we were in was Pushkar, a little holy village where they don't serve alcohol and don't eat meat.
There we went on a camel ride in the desert - defo the highlight of the trip so far for me! They're lovely animals - not dirty at all, well our ones weren't, their faces are just so cute! And we'd two little Indian boys as our drivers! We gave them presents of mini radios and some euros and the obligatory tip!
They have so little compared to us it's awful. Every so often the poverty just hits you - people living in huts at the side of the road, mothers and babies begging for money, people sleeping in their rickshaws, it's just awful. But if you give money to one person, there's about 500 swarming around you then and there's no escape! Shona brought copies and colouring pencils and pens with her from home and they went down a treat, the kids absolutely loved them! So it's probably better to give little presents rather than money in the long run.
Our next stop was in Udaiper, they call it the Venice of the East but the lakes have kinda dried up cos there's been no rain in ages, so it's not as stunning as it should be. Even so, it's still lovely. We had dinner one night in the Lake Palace Hotel, where Octupussy, the James Bond film was shot. It's on an island and the lily pond area is where most of the island scenes were shot. Absolutely fab place, I've never seen a hotel like it. Today's our last day here before getting the train to Mumbai tonight. It'll take us till tomorrow to get there cos the trains are so slow here! We were supposed to go to Goa, but it's raining loads there now so we're not sure what the plan is yet. So far we've been really lucky with the weather, v. hot with only a tiny bit of rain.
Hope everyone who reads this is well. This is a v. long email cos I prob won't be able to send another one for weeks! The net doesn't exactly work all that well here so I said I might as well send a decent one while I can!
Oh, the food isn't exactly agreeing with us here, but we’ll manage I suppose!! Bit of a nightmare but what can you do!!!
Anyway, better go. Will try to send pictures with the next email if I can.
Take care everyone.
Suze
