Well here we are, our first blog entry. We are currently sitting in a really nice hotel, Hotel Glitz, in Jaipur (thank you Daji, Kaki, Shivani and Nikita for recommending!). We've had a good first couple of days, so we'll start from the beginning, happy reading!

Day 1 - 1st November 2010 (Leaving the UK)

After issues with online check-in all day on Sunday, we had to check in at the airport which meant we almost ended up sitting in different parts of the plane - not the ideal way to start our honeymoon. Jen played the "we just got married" card and we got upgraded to "World Traveller" class, which meant access to a very posh VIP lounge, complete with all you can eat/drink including wine/beer! Unfortunately as pre-made cheese and cucumber sandwiches had already been eaten we couldn't take full advantage, although Krish did manage a plate of cold foods J

We won't bore you with the details of the plane journey but neither of us managed to sleep properly which didn't bode well for our 6am arrival in Delhi!

Day 2 - 2nd November 2010 (Delhi)

When we arrived In Delhi International Airport there was a very nice man with a sign saying "Krishan Mistry" waiting for us. We were so glad that we had pre-arranged airport pick-up as we didn't fancy trying to negotiate a taxi fare straight away!

Although it was a good idea to arrange pick-up, the car that we had was the smallest car on the road and it kept stalling! This didn't do us any favours on our first experience of the crazy Delhi roads and the mad driving styles (Jen didn't let go of the handle the whole way J)

We arrived at our hotel, Wood Castle, in the district of Karol Bagh at 7am greeted by friendly staff. Although parts of it are still being decorated, we would recommend this hotel as the staff make you feel right at home.

As we didn't sleep on the plane, we had a strategic 3 hour nap to allow get us accustomed to India time. We then spoke to one of the guys in the hotel and he arranged a car for us for the day (we probably paid too much for this but the convenience of having someone take us to all of the right places was very appealing due to the limited time we have here).

Our drivers name was Manjit, he couldn't speak too much English, but it was good enough. He took us to Qutb Minar (the first monuments of Islamic rule in India), the Bahai House of Worship (the beautiful Lotus shaped temple), Humayun's Tomb (built by the Emperor's wife, it influenced the build of the Taj Mahal), India Gate (looked awesome at night as it was all lit up), the President's house (we had to drive past this as you are not allowed to stop here with cars), and the Lashmi Narayan Temple (Hindu temple, went last thing though so we didn't get to see it too much, but we still managed to take Darshan). As you can see we managed to see quite a lot, however we would have seen so much more if it wasn't for the manic Delhi traffic which was made worse by Diwali shoppers.

When we got back after our whistle stop tour we sat down with the owners of the hotel, Rajesh and Mr Singh. They gave us complimentary beer/coke and food, the beer was thrown in to celebrate us being newlyweds (we didn't say that we were newlyweds, they saw Jen's mendhi, but we're thinking we should mention it more often as it's got it's perks J)

Day 3 - 3rd November 2010 (Delhi-Jaipur)

We took it easy this morning as we knew we had a bit of a journey later on. We had Aloo Paratha with Chai for breakfast. It came with curd but we avoided this and stuck to the lime pickle.

It took a really long, non-ac taxi journey through a hot and busy Old Delhi to get to the train station. As we arrived there early we sat in McDonalds for fries and a drink to kill time. It wasn't until after we had finished we realised that the coke had ice in it, then after that we realised that we weren't sure where the carbonated water for the coke itself would have come from... panic set in as we realised that a 5 hour train journey would not be the time to get our first bout of Delhi Belly (we both took a pre-emptive Imodium to make sure this didn't happen!).

When we got on the train we found ourselves in our own private cabin with bunk beds (just like in the James bond movies), we were glad that we paid that little bit extra for 1st class AC! The journey itself was uneventful and we managed to write a bit of our journal and think about what we want to do the rest of the time we are in Rajasthan.

Getting off the train at 8.20pm we were greeted by 2 rickshaw drivers who insisted they take us to our hotel. As they both spoke pretty good English and it was late we got in, we then realised they didn't know exactly where our hotel was as they kept asking different people. Driving through the centre of Jaipur was awesome though as the streets were all lit up and there was a really good atmosphere due to it being Diwali time. During our drive we saw that someone had been knocked off their moped (we were surprised that it had taken so long for us to see this as the driving is pretty reckless here) and then the police decided to stop our rickshaw as the lights weren't working, however the drivers managed to persuade them to let us carry on which we were very relieved about J

We finally found our hotel and as we mentioned at the start of the blog we were very pleased with it. As it was getting late we went straight for dinner in the restaurant on the roof of the hotel, where we had curry again (well...when in Rome J) and we also managed to catch the last part of some traditional Rajasthan entertainment which was pretty cool.

After dinner we did our first batch of washing in the bathroom sink... we had so much stuff after only a few days and we don't know how! It was past midnight at this point so we went to bed with the alarm set for the latest possible time for us to have breakfast!

Well, that's probably enough for our first blog entry... we're off to shop in the Diwali excitement and we're really looking forward to seeing all of the fireworks from the rooftop restaurant. Our next blog will probably tell you all about it!

Krish & Jen