Up early to repack our bags and get ready for our journey to Nawalgarh. We were introduced to our driver, Thulsi (?), yesterday and we had arranged to set off at 10am. A few delay meant we didn’t set off until after 10:30. The going was slow as we made our way through the ever chaotic traffic in Jaipur.

As we left the city, the traffic and landscape changed, with a higher proportion of camel carts and jeeps on the road and the rows of shops and houses giving way to open scrubland.

Further into the journey, most of the cars were the Indian-made Jeeps, usually loaded to bursting point with people. Many had people hanging on to the outside or even sitting on the roof.

During the journey Thulsi was very quiet, and we realised that this was because his English wasn’t verygood, though it was still better than our ability to speak his language!

We finally arrived at Nawalgarh at about 2pm, but our driver didn’t seem to know the town or the location of our hotel. After numerous stops to ask directions, we arrived at another guest house owned by the man who owned our hotel. It was only a short drive from there and we finally arrived at Apani Dhani Apani Dhani (meaning “our hamlet”) is an eco-lodge, providing food and accomodation to visitors on a working farm. The hot water for showers is heated by home-built solar panels, and photo-voltaic cells provide some of the electricty for the accomodation which consists of several traditionally-built huts with thatched roofs. It was a big change from the Hotel Diggi Palace but we had stayed in similar huts during our two trips to the Maldives.

We were greeted and shown our room before going to register and chat with the manager about local sights etc.

We rested for a while before heading out in the car again. The manager Apani Dhani gave our driver instructions on how to get to the Poddar Haveli / museum, but the lack of road signs or names meant that we were soon stopping to ask for directions again. Thulsi had picked up ona amention of Roop Niwas Palace during the directions and so took us there. It’s a hotel and so wasn’t really much use for sight seeing. After 10 minutes there we asked to go to the musuem and after backtracking 1km or so did finally get there.

The museum also serves as a charity school for around 1,000 boys and 50 girls, taught in two shifts in the upper rooms of the haveli. Whether the proportions are indicative of most schools in Rajasthan, I don’t know, though the guidebooks do say that the literacy rate is low, and the mortality rate high for women in Rajasthan.

The haveli has been restored by the Poddar family who are merchants who now operate successful businesses in Mumbai. They also pay for most of the costs of the school. The entire building is covered in colourful frescos, many of scenes from Hindu mythology, but also others of typical Rajasthani scenes and paintings of trains, British soldiers etc.

There are several galleries of objects of which our accompanying guide gave us a comprehensive tour. time was drawing on so we had to return to our lodge, this time without having to ask directions and only taking one wrong turning.

Our evening meal was taken with two Belgian ladies who were staying in the adjoining hut. The meal was traditional vegetarian fare, starting with a cauliflower, spinach and pumpkin soup, followed by dry potatoes, dall, spinach and rice, with a rice pudding dessert. This was all served on plates and bowls made from leaves which could then be composted.

We’re in Jaipur, I’ve written lots of text but can’t get it onto this PC in the Internet cafe at Hotel Diggi Palace .

I’ve turned off blog commenting as I was getting too much comment spam. A shame someone always tries to make something out of other people…

We’re well and I’ll update as soon as I can get text off the PDA….

Up early so we could eat breakfast in the sunshine on the restaurant terrace.

Off with Ali again, this time to Amber Palace. On the way there we passed streams of people heading for the Palace along with several painted elephants. They were going to the Palace for a nine day festival, resulting in the whole area being very crowded.

We walked up the hill to the Palace along with some of the pilgrims but the sight of the queues for entrance put us off venturing any further. We set off back down after taking a few photos of the views, hoping that Ali would then take us to the nearby fort. Sadly, we had expressed an interest in buying Vic some trousers, so were instead whisked off to a factory/shop where we were given a hard-sell on some bedspreads, pashminas and trousers. We weren’t impressed by the prices, being asked for Rs1,200 for a pair of plain cotton trousers seemed a bit rich to us (and you can get them cheaper at H&M or Uniqlo in the UK!)

Ali seemed disappointed that we hadn’t made a purchase, no doubt he would have received a wedge of commission. We asked to be taken to an ATM where we replenished our cash reserves for the forthcoming trip, as the Diggi Palace doesn’t take credit cards.

Then it was back to the hotel for some more lounging and cold drinks.

That brings us up to date at time of writing. The internet cafe here is a bit more expensive (Rs1 per minute) than at the Hotel Ajanta but I’m hoping I can upload this (written on my Sony UX50 PDA) using my USB card reader.

Later: The card reader needs drivers for any version of Windows before Windows ME. The machines at Diggi Palace are running Windows 98SE, I downloaded the drivers but haven’t had a chance to copy stuff off yet.

In case anyone wants to drop me a
message, I’m turning comments offon the blog as I’m spending too much time in internet cafes deleting comment spam. As a result you’ll need to email me using the link near the top of the bar at the side.

A leisurely breakfast and a bit of lounging in the garden, I’d recommend the Hotel Diggi Palace to anyone. Our room (with air-con, fans and en-suite bathroom) was Rs1,080 inc. (about 14 pounds).
The hotel arranged for an autorickshaw to take us out at 2pm. Our driver was a nice chap called Ali and his rickshaw could seat 4 passengers. The first destination was the City Palace, with a brief stop at one of the gates into The Pink City en-route.

Ali dropped us outside the palace and agreed to meet us an hour and a half later. After paying the Rs180 each entry fee we went into the Palace to be greeted by several men offering their services as guides. We turned these down and headed for the textile gallery. This was a display of clothing worn by the Maharajas of Jaipur and members of their families. We were accompanied round by a splendidly moustachioed chap in a turban who filled us in on lots of detail about the exhbits in exchange for a Rs10 “gift”.

Heading through a gate, we came across a section of the Palace being used as a film set, teaming with actors, crew members and extras, along with four beautifully decorated camels and two fantastic elephants covered in jewellry. Nearby were two huge silver pots (apparently the largest pieces of silver in the world) which one of the Maharajas filled with water from the Ganges to take to England with him for the coronation of Queen Victoria’s successor; he didn’t trust the English water.

A quick walk round the less interesting art gallery and armoury gallery and we headed out to see the Royal Observatory. This was an area of ground filled with strange shaped constructions which were (and still are) used as sundials and for checking zodiacal alignments etc. One sundial is 27 metres high and can be used to tell the time within 2 seconds.

After that we met upwith Ali again and drove off up the Amber Road to a water palace, the Jal Mahal, and then on to the Maharajas’ chhatris (marble and sandstone tombs) at Gaitor. Monkeys were playing in the nearby banyan tree and Ali gave us a tour of the tombs.

Back to the hotel for a drink and more sitting in the garden. We were called over by an old chap who mans the switchboard at the hotel and shown an impressive portfolio of paintings, including some tiny ones (less than a centimetre square) of elephants. We succumbed to his charms or rather those of the paintings and bought a few postcard sized pictures, with the most expensive costing Rs250 (about 3 pounds). We resisted the “message written on a grain of rice” though. Not entirely sure I could find a use for one of those.

We called some hotels for our car trip and booked rooms for a our 3 day Shekawati excursion (Nawalgarh and Mahansar).

A good meal at the hotel restaurant and we retired to bed, having agreed to meet Ali for further sightseeing at 11am the next day.

Up at the outrageous hour of 5am to get to the station for our train. it was still pitch black outside so we got another autorickshaw rather than staggering the streets of Delhi with our packs.

Arriving at the station we headed for the train on platform 1 as per our instructions from the previous visit to the station, but found that our train actually went from Platform 9. We made it to our seats with 5 minutes to spare.

The carriage was clean, if a little tatty, and the seats had plenty of leg room. On these Shatabdi Express trains, your ticket includes a bottle of water, and food and tea during the journey, as well as a complimentary newspaper. The ticket to Jaipur cost Rs490 each, about 6 pounds, for distance of 315km. National Rail in the UK could learn something…

The train left on time and for the first hour crawled through the outskirts of Delhi, most of which seemed to be slums and shanty towns.

Looking out of the window, it was interesting to see the changes as we got further in to Rajasthan. The people’s skins were darker, and many of the men wore more Arabian style clothing. There were also camels, working in the fields as well as pulling carts along the roads.

The terrain was generally incredibly flat, with the occasional hill rearing up from the plain, appearing to be almost man-made.

I also noticed there were a greater number of women working in the fields, all dressed in various bright colours. Several were dressed in orange/red and at firstglance appeared to be flames flickering in the sunlit countryside.

The train was due to arrive in Jaipur at about 10:30am but finally got there at about 11:15am. After our previous experience we didn’t hold out much hope of the taxi from our hotel being there, but we were delighted to find a man holding a sign with Vic’s name on it. He took us over to his jeep and drove us through Jaipur to our hotel. Jaipur was noticeably cleaner and lighter than Delhi, and the traffic not quite so crowded (though it was equally crazy).

The hotel,Hotel Diggi Palace was down a little side road off SMS Hospital Rd, and set in a lovely peaceful garden. Our room was great, overlooking a courtyard. The hotel garden were full of birds and animals; sparrows, crows, green parakeets as well as chipmunks.

We chatted to one of the men running the hotel about our proposed itinerary, and he suggested that it may be better ( though more expensive) to hire a car and driver for a few days. We thought about this and decided to take him up on it, but with a changed itinerary. We decided to skip Bikaner for the being, with the possibility of heading the straight from Delhi towards the end of our stay in India in order to have a go at camel trekking. So now the plan was: Nawalgarh, little place called Mahansar, back to Jaipur, on to Jodhpur and then to Udaipur where the driver would leave us.

That will stretch our budget a bit, but saves us hassle of early morning trains, taxis etc.

Outside our hotel window was a large garden belonging to a neighbouring house. During Wednesday we had noticed quite a lot of activity in the garden, with construction of a stage and decorations taking place.

Off to Connaught Place by autorickshaw to find an ATM, a mission accomplished fairly quickly. We then found a mobile phone shop in order to sort out a pay-as-you-go SIM card. The call costs from Indian mobiles seem to be considerably lower than in the UK, with most calls being less that Rs5 per minute and calls to the UK being much cheaper than using our Virgin Mobile accounts.

We wandered round the circular roads around Connaught Place, both of us a little disappappointed by how run down the area was. Back to the hotel for a rest and to pay our deposit for the train tickets, and then out for a walk to the railway station to familiarise ourselves with it before our 6.05am train the next day.

Both on the way to the station and at Connaught Sq. Vic was the victim of so called ‘Eve Teasing’, where men seem to think that it’s fine to grope a woman who is walking down the street. Vic was conservatively dressed (trousers & shirt) and obviously with me. Unfortunately, it was always done when Vic was behind me and she didn’t mention it until we got back to the hotel. The attitude towards women in general and Western women in particular is very bad, with the latter being seen as easy prey.

Back at the hotel, we went to pick up our train tickets. They had our ticket to Jaipur, and a “waiting list” ticket to Nawalgarh, but said that the train to Bikaner was “full”. By “full” they actually meant non-existant. The only way from Nawalgarh to Bikaner by train was to get a train back to Jaipur, and then go to Bikaner from there, but we now had a pretty useless one-way ticket to Nawalgarh. Oh, and they charged us twice the previously agreed commission rate of Rs50 per ticket. Not best pleased , but a useful learning experience.

As we settled back in our room, the stage outside erupted into action, initially with a group of people worshipping, followed by what seemed to be an over-amplified play with much cheering from the crowd which had gathered. Fortunately this only lasted three hours so we were able to get a decent night’s sleep before our early start on Friday.

Another day of recovery, though we did go in search of an ATM. Unfortunately, the closest one was out of order and we didn’t fancy going to Connaught Place to find one. We checked with the hotel travel agent, Capital City Tours, about getting train tickets to Jaipur, then Nawalgarh and finally onto Bikaner. They said that wouldn’t be a problem and we could paya Rs2,000 deposit (about 25 pounds) and they would book the tickets. As the ATM was out of action, that would have to wait until Thursday.

The flight to Delhi was much shorter, at a little over 3 hours, we both skipped the breakfast offered and tried to get some sleep.

Arriving in Delhi, there was slight delay while our plane was lined up with the terminal building. After queuing at immigration we moved to on collect our luggage. Our bags were already out on the carousel by the time we arrived there and we then braced ourselves to find the driver that our pre-booked hotel said they would send.

The arrivals hall was surprisingly quiet for 10.30am on a tuesday morning. We were not terribly surprised to find that the promised taxi was not there so Vic went to the pre-paid taxi booth and got us a taxi to the hotel for Rs250 (just over 3 pounds).

The taxi was our first real experience of Delhi. The car itself was pretty old and beaten up, a classic old Ambassador type. Now the traffic system in India is difficult to describe. Total chaos on first inspection, with a rough “drive on the left” rule and roundabouts being a free-for-all with the largest vehicle getting right of way. No one seems to collide, thought the state of most vehicles would indicate that collisions are far from rare. The noise of the cars, autorickshaws and mopeds all hooting their horns is tremendous. The horn is the default control on any vehicle. Want to turn? Sound the horn! Want to overtake or slow down? Sound the horn! Want to announce that you are on the road? Sound the horn! There don’t seem to be any lanes, moped riders rarely wear helmets, and a family of 5 will fit on a moped. Then there’s the animals. Cattle wander freely, often sitting down in the middle of the road while traffic roars around them. There were pigs, goats and dogs running loose down the side (and middle) of the road. Bullocks, oxen and horses pulled carts. Joining this throng were cycle rickshaws often holding 4 or more people.

After half an hour or so, the taxi turned down a side street close to New Delhi railway station, and pulled up outside our hotel, Hotel Ajanta. We weren’t expecting too much, given the failure to send a taxi, and the hotel didn’t seem to have any idea we were coming. We were given room on the fourth floor but a couple of minutes in the was enough; the room stank of burnt carpet from a large hole in one corner, the only window was about 1ft square and the room was thus very gloomy. We popped down to reception and were offered a new room, this time on the third floor with a large window. That was a vast improvement so we settled into rest after the journey. We were so tired the only thing we did for the rest of that day was pop down to the great little restaurant attached to the hotel, Cafe Vagabond, for an excellent veg thali (costing about Rs60, which is 75 pence each). A bottle of drinking water was Rs10, about 12 pence, for a litre.

The hotel also has an internet cafe, costing just Rs20 per hour, with access being quite fast. The keyboards and mice are a bit flakey, and on a couple of occasions the other sort of mouse, small brown and furry one, made an appearance next to the screen.

We were up until about 3am repacking Vic’s bags as she couldn’t lift them at first. Still way too much stuff but we can’t think what else to leave behind. Lots of space taken up by contact lenses and anti-malarial tablets, at least 4 months supplies of both for each of us.

Up at 7am to finish off packing and sort out photocopies of documents etc before finally getting a cab to Paddington at 9:30. The Heathrow Express got us to the airport in 15 minutes; we usually use it when going on holiday but this is the first time we’ve bought single tickets rather than a return. No point getting a return as it would have expired by the time we’re planning on coming back.

We met up with Vic’s parent, her sister and her sister’s boyfriend at a coffee shop in the airport, and my parents turned up shortly afterwards, having come in from their hotel near Hyde Park.

A couple of hours were passed talking about plans, sorting out a few bits of paperwork etc before it was time for us to head off to departures.

Tears were shed as we all said goodbye, but we all knew that everthing was going to be okay, we would just missing having each other around. Vic and I made our way through security with backward glances to our families and tears in our eyes, but looking forward to the adventure ahead.

A few last minute items were purchased at Boots (ear plugs, vitamins) and then it was time to board the flight to Dubai. The flight to Dubai is almost seven hours so we appreciated the in-flight movies to keep us entertained. We lost about 3 hours due to time difference between the UK and UAE so arrived at around midnight, Dubai time.

Dubai airport was very busy, the airport operates right through the night but we managed to secure ourselves a couple of seats in the quiet area to await our 4.35am departure.

I’ve not had time to write up the rest of our adventures in Scotland, and we leave for India on Monday so I’m going to do a quick summary.

After a couple of days at Fort Augustus waiting for the van to have its brake vacuum pump replaced, we headed over to Skye, visiting Eilean Donan on the way.

We stayed on Skye for four nights, at a very nice campsite just outside Portree. We spent a day driving round the north of the island, with great weather making the experience much more enjoyable. We both really liked Skye and hope to go back there when we return to the UK.

After Skye, it was time to head home. We did this in 3 days, stopping at Fort Augustus and Berwick-on-Tweed before reaching my parent’s house in Cleethorpes.

We stayed in Cleethorpes for a week, managing to fit in a trip to Blundell Park to see “The Mariners while we were there. We also did some work tidying up the bodywork of the van.

Next up was Bury St Edmunds, where Vic’s parents live. We spent a couple of weeks there, getting some more repairs done to the van (leaking oil seals) and reducing the amount of stuff we were taking to London.

For the last leg of the trip we drove down to London, to stay in the YHA at Hampstead Heath / Golders Green. We’ve been there for about 3 weeks now, sorting out passports, jabs, tickets, stuff to take and lots more. The van has had even more work done on it, this time more oil seals were replaced, the gearbox was changed and a new clutch was fitted (the other one had been contaminated with oil from the leaking seals).

Sadly we’ve not been able to sell the van yet, so I’m hoping to either store it or get someone to sell it for me.

That brings us up to date, pretty much. Not sure when I’ll be updating next as it depends on Internet access in India.