Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Delhi, Agra, and Rajastan
We landed in the dark and went looking for our hotel pick-up (we'd booked ahead to make our lives easier). After half and hour of wandering we decided we weren't getting picked up! So we caught a cab to the backpacker part of Delhi, Paharganj. After dodging all of the offers of a good hotel room, and visiting the not so delightful Decent Guesthouse (some walls missing), we managed to find a good hotel room!
We only spent one day in Delhi this time, knowing that we were coming back for our flight home and so didn't see much of the city. Instead we caught the train to Agra. It was only about two hours late and so we arrived in a deserted city (apart from the stray dogs). We got up early to see the Taj Mahal. It was amazing! The photos don't do it justice, but it is really impressive to see. After a leisurely breakfast overlooking the Taj we took a rickshaw to see the baby Taj, a park overlooking the Taj from across the river, and Agra Fort. The sites in Agra are brilliant, but the city is pretty nasty. So the following day we were off to Jaipur…
We did the usual sightseeing in Jaipur, visiting the Pink (Old) City, a couple of palaces, and the Amber Fort (which had some amazing views). It was Diwali while we were here, so there were lots of fireworks, some of which landed on the rooftop where we were eating dinner! We enjoyed Jaipur and ate some good food here, but there was one road here that apparently every animal (and I think potentially some people!) in the city used as a toilet and we couldn't seem to avoid it!
Onto Bundi, a little town with lots of old houses and a fort and palace on a hill. We had to take a monkey stick with us when we visited the fort (I think we were meant to use it to hit the monkeys if they attacked us!), but we didn't stay long as the entire place was overrun by monkeys with huge teeth! On another day we took a (very long and bumpy) rickshaw ride to some rock paintings at Garardha (where the entire village came with us to look at the paintings) and a waterfall at Bhimlet. The rickshaw driver also bought us a picnic lunch of potentially the most amazing potato samosas ever. One night at dinner in Bundi, as it was still Diwali, the family that owned the restaurant we were eating in invited us to their family firework night (as we were the only guests) - the best bit was one firework that spun around on the ground spraying out sparks that all of the family (including the dad who was a doctor) jumped up and down in. Difficult to explain but it was hilarious! We felt like part of the family by the end of the night and one of the little girls even gave Lois a goodbye present of some earrings. We really enjoyed Bundi, it was a friendly and relaxed place to spend a few days.
Our train to Udaipur required a few hours stop in Chittor, where we spent our time eating very expensive food and going around the old fort (which was well worth the stop). On our second train we bumped into Katherina, who we'd met in Goa and last seen in Bangalore! We squeezed into a rickshaw (me in the front) and found our very full guesthouse…
Udaipur is a really pretty city, set around a lake with a few palaces - our room had a view of the lake. We spent nearly a week here, visiting the city palace, taking a boat around Lake Pichola, visiting Jagmandir Island, and seeing the palace in the lake that was used in Octop**** (nearly every restaurant showed Octop**** every night!). It was a pretty lazy few days, spent eating lots of good food on rooftop restaurants with views of the lake and palaces.
We eventually left and travelled to Jodhpur via Kumbalgarh (another old fort with lots of temples inside) and Ranakpur (an amazing Jain temple). We didn't like Jodphur much (it was very smelly and dirty, especially around our guesthouse!), but the fort there is again really good. Mehrangarh Fort is still run by descendants of the Maharaja and is pretty amazing (and it has some good views over the Blue City). Luckily it was worth the visit to Jodhpur on its own!
We caught the very early bus out of Jodhpur (we didn't want to spend too long there!) to Jaisalmer and easily found our guesthouse (we just ignored all the rickshaw drivers who were there to pick us up). We spent a couple of lazy days here, visiting the fort and palace (there are so many in India!), and enjoying the unexpectedly relaxed vibe here. Then it was up early for an overnight camel safari with two girls, Nora and Anka, who are studying here on an exchange programme (Anka had randomly spent a year at uni in Portsmouth which pleased Lois). Lois' camel was called Michael Jackson, mine Bapoo. We did two hours riding in the morning, followed by a good lunch cooked in the desert, and then four more hours riding to the sand dunes. Our bums were killing by the time we arrived at our camp for the night!! We had more good food around the campfire before settling down for a cold night under the stars (it really did get cold at night, but we had lots of blankets). We were woken up to breakfast of boiled eggs, toast, and chai (Indian tea) and then we had about three hours of riding (agony) to our jeep pick-up. We had a great time on the camel safari, but our bottoms were a bit sore afterwards!
We had a nice lunch in Jaisalmer (pasta!!!!) and caught the overnight bus (the dirtiest bus in the world) to Pushkar (overnight except that it was due to arrive at 3am!). We actually arrived early and spent about an hour looking for our hotel (the bus dropped us on the other side of town). We found it quite easily, and after the night man had woken up he showed us to a very comfortable room, making us very happy! Our first couple of days in Pushkar coincided with the end of the camel fair, so there were lots of camels, hot air balloons, and people! It was quite fun to see, but a lot of the people there found the westerners more interesting than the camels (we got stared at a lot). The last day had some religious significance and so there were thousands of people going down to the ghats (steps) surrounding the lake. Pushkar quietened down after the fair and we spent a couple of chilled out days eating some good food. Unfortunately the rain arrived and it got all a bit muddy (we hope it was mostly mud). One street was flooded on our last morning there, and so a rickshaw driver was becoming a wealthy man taking everyone up and down the road!
While we were in Pushkar we realised we'd booked our train tickets for the wrong day and had actually missed it! And we'd booked it way back when we were in Darjeeling! Unable to get more train tickets and unwilling to get back on a minging bus, we took a car to Delhi! Which is where we are now… sitting in our comfortable hotel from our last visit, about to attempt some sightseeing around the city.
We'll be flying home soon and we hope to catch up with you all before Christmas!! I will try to do a quick update on Delhi when we get back, but no promises (just in case anyone apart from our parents are reading this!)
- comments