Drop me a line at Will_in_the_hill@hotmail.com
<William> Back home now and the journey is over!
Managed to get food poisoning from eating the chicken on the flight home, but since recovering from that I've been catching up with people. Did a picnic in Hyde Park for everyone at the weekend so that people could all sample my cooking and that seemed to go down pretty well.
Playing Kub in Hyde Park
Picnic people
I've got all of my photos developed now so I've gone back over the past few postings and added in my favourite shots.
Maz is still sunning herself in Malaysia but we'll be meeting up in Ireland in a few weeks time for Donals wedding so looking forward to that!
So, just have to enjoy the last of the summer here and set about getting myself a job! </William> <!--11:07 AM-->
<William> After Jaisalmer we stayed in the Samode Palace, just outside of Jaipur for Maz's birthday. It's a pretty swish 5 star hotel that was used to film the BBC drama 'the far pavillions'. Click here to see the website!
Amazingly we didn't get ill after eating the food on the trek, but the food in the 5 star restaurant (buffet only, so had been sitting there a while) made me pretty ill for a few days! Still, the hotel was spectacular - we just spent most of our time hanging out by the pool or watching tennis on the tele!
We headed onto Delhi on our way back, which ws our first really big city in India. It wasn't quite as bad as we expected, but it certainly was busy, dirty and polluted and had the worst touts and rudest people we had encountered, so not much different to London really ;^)
We did manage to do a bit of shopping whilst there - Maz got me a really slick cream linen suit for my birthday and we picked up loads of other nick-nacks from the shops & bazzars. Our rucksacks are getting so full that we had to send a parcel of stuff home. Still not sure how I'm going to fit everything in for the flight home!
The trek from Delhi to Kathmandu was pretty gruelling. After spending the day sweating continuously in Delhi we took an overnight train, sleeping on a sticky plastic matress, then took a bus 3hrs to the border then another bus for about 8hrs to Kathmandu. By the time we arrived we were pretty dirty, smelly and tired, but was not so bad as that will be the last of the travelling until the flight home.
So, we're spending my birthday in Kathmandu - going to the Everest Steak House tonight to celebrate with a 'Chateubriand' (yak) steak - the very finest steak available. Mmmmmmmmmmm. </William> <!--5:53 AM-->
<William> After Jaipur we moved onto the 'blue city' of Jodphur. It's a stunning place to look at - the 500 year old houses are all painted blue, traditionally because the indigo dye was good at killing termites and repelling mosquitos. Rising out the middle of the blue city is the fort made from red sandstone, with amazingly intricate carvings made into the stone. It's all quite a sight at sunset when it's bathed in an orange glow!
View of the fort from the hills
The fort with the blue city below
After that we headed south to Udaipur, the town which has the famous 'floating palaces' (not actually floating, but just built in the middle of a lake) where much of Octopussy was filmed. It was a great place to be as it's low season there at the moment and we stayed in a really nice hotel for a quarter of their normal price.
Whilst in Udaipur we lived the 5-star lifestyle, visiting some of the most expensive hotels that had been converted from royal palaces. One afternoon we went for the traditional english afternoon tea complete with scones and (artificial) cream. The room had the biggest chandeliers I've ever seen and the walls were dotted with black & white photos of Brits on hunting parties with one leg on a dead tiger and a shotgun slung over one arm. Another day we spent the entire day sitting by the most ornate swimming pool in town, at another 5 star hotel. The pool was made from white marble with beautiful carvings all around, and was used for one of the scenes in Octopussy too. We were the only people there all day and we had about 5 turbaned guys standing around waiting for us to click our fingers and order our next drink!!
The 'floating' palaces of Udaipur (not floating any more as the lake levels are too low!)
After Udaipur the plan was to head south to Bangalore to meet up with some of the people I used to work with. We booked our tickets about a week in advance but the train was full so we had to go on a waiting list (which had been fine for previous journeys). However, this time our luck was out and the train was full - there was absolutely no way to get on. We spent about 4 or 5 hours in the booking office trying to work out another way to make it down south, but it seemed that every single train out for the next 2 or 3 days was completely booked up. In fact it later transpired (after even longer trying to book tickets) that every single train in every direction was booked up, so we ended up taking an overnight bus. We could well understand why there was such a rush to get out of the city though - the place seemed like a complete hell hole - more flies than I had ever seen in my life and choking fumes from the traffic congesting the streets. Later on when we got the bus out I think we saw the 'real' Ahmedabad which actually looked quite nice, it was just that we were stuck in the train station all day!
We had to change our route and it seemed like the best option would be to backtrack through Rajasthan and visit Jaisalmer, the desert city, right near the border with Pakistan. The bus ride out goes through about 200km of baking hot barren desert with the occasional hut or shepards hideout, then suddenly you turn a corner and the giant imposing sandstone fort rises out of the desert in the distance.
The desert fort of Jaisalmer
We've just got back from a camel trek in the Thar desert. We found out pretty quickly why no-one lives in the desert - it's a pretty inhospitable place. Gale force blustering winds whipped up a sandstorm throughout the day which meant that sand got everywhere - in our eyes, sticking to our suncream covered skin,and worst of all into our cameras. My camera is now completely ruined (motor jammed up with sand) and possibly also the film that was in it which had all of my shots of North India. Maz's camera is also sounding a bit grindy, and has sand all inside the lens.
Maz on her camel
The view from my camel
Apart from that there were a few highlights to the trip- we made it acros the barren dusty landscape to some amazing peachy-coloured sand dunes which look exactly how you'd expect a desert to look! It was a weird scene, as it was about hours before sunset and the sun was getting low, but there was so much dust and sand in the air that it was getting quite dark and the sun looked more like a pale moon.
Hygeine conditions weren't too great on the trek so we're currently waiting to see if we're going to get ill. This morning, after breakfast the guides washed up the pots & plates in dirt they'd just been spitting in. After that they put them into a bag which was once yellow but was so dirty it was grey. Then, to add insult to injury a dog wandered up, cocked it's leg and peed all over the bag & the pots! At lunchtime we just buried our dinner in the sand when they weren't looking!
</William> <!--7:22 AM-->
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