After a busy six hour train journey as the only non-Indian in the carriage - with lots of stares both at me and my bright pink rucksack! - I arrived in Jaipur, the Pink City and the third corner of India's Golden Triangle. I've just spent dinner with some friends from Paris in the rooftop restaurant of the neighbouring guesthouse with views over the whole of Jaipur and lightening brightening up the sky. And beginning to get used to Indian food with stuffed tomatoes, buttered naan, aloo palak (spinach and potato), and endless selectiom of lassi's in every flavour all delicious.

Jaipur itself is busy, bustling and grubby. Driving rules definitely don't exist and everyone drives in every direction, honking their horns loudly at every opportunity. as in the rest of India so far. Staring comes in abundance, along with endless requests for you to join family photos or hold someone's child while they take a snapshot of their own. And no matter how much I try to get used to it...men holding hands with each other is still funny!

But the beautiful Amber Palace, just outside Jaipur and the stunning City Palace in the centre of the Pink City are amazing, and make for a wonderful relief from the business outside! A trip to the Janter Manter, a series of astronomical monuments, designed to track the movement and distances of the stars and sun, was completely bizarre, especially with no guide to explain any of it, but intriguing non the less. And even walking through the bazaar today just as all the local children were coming home from school and being greated with endless questions and smiles was amazing! I've met some really generous people and also had to laugh at some of the quirkiness of the place; pigs bathing in the sewers, goats eating the paintwork off the gates at the Amber Fort, Cows in the middle of the road - even they walk in the wrong direction! - and monkeys at the renamed Monkey Palace tustling and splashing around in the water.

Off to bed soon before heading to Pushkar tomorrow!