Rajasthan

Hello all,

Greetings from Jaisalmer, in the west of Rajasthan near the border
with Pakistan. The most immediate observation is that it is HOT. We
had got used to the heat but this is something else and Sarah has been
unable to think about anything other than Magnum ice creams. Which
they don't have. It is torture. We arrived this morning after our
worst train journey yet. There is a very big festival going on in
Rajasthan (over 1 million pilgrims attend!) and there were thousands
of them trying to get on the same train as us from Jodhpur. The train
was over 3 hours late in the end and we had a very long, very hot wait
on a packed platform in the middle of the night.

Anyway, we are here now. There is sadly no sign of any rain. We are
about to go on the camel safari in the Thar desert. This is a very
authentic, traditional tourist activity.

Backtracking a bit, we last blogged in Agra. We went from there to
Jaipur which was a big city with a fort and a palace and so on. This
is fairly standard for Rajasthani cities. It was good but if I am
honest I am now struggling to remember what the fort looked like, we
have now seen a lot of forts!

We then went to Udaipur which was absolutely amazing. The city was
just beautiful but so was the surrounding countryside which was where
our hotel was - the peace and quiet, after weeks of staying in cities,
was just heaven. We could have happily stayed for a week or more. As
it was, we had 3 lovely days, we did another cooking class and went on
a trek (which some enjoyed more than others due to knee injuries and
the blistering heat!) in the mountains. We met some nice people and
had some great food and didn't really want to leave.

We then went to Jodphur via another fort, which was incredible, and
also via a Jainist temple, which was interesting.

Jodphur's fort was actually pretty memorable, as was the city itself
which was your typical crazy busy Indian city which was interesting to
stroll around.

So we left Jodhpur last night as we have already mentioned!

The rain in Jaipur and Jodhpur was vey heavy at times, we had a few
hairy rickshaw rides where we nearly had to get out and swim, but it
was manageable and there was hardly any rain in Udaipur.

We are going back to Delhi tomorrow and then home on Friday!

Love from Sarah and Luke x

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