Jodhpur- The Blue City

After 350km which took 6 hours in the car (Rajasthan is not known for the quality of it's roads) we arrived in Jodhpur. Unfortunatley this was were both of us started to feel quite ill, a combination of 2 months worth of curry for breakfast and nervous butterflies about the UK. To be honest we were feeling ruined by the ruins again and were keen to sleep through the remaining days in India. We managed however to push through the pain barrier and visit a few worthy landmarks in the Blue City. Jodhpur really is blue! From the fort you can clearly see that approx. 80% of the houses are blue in colour. The blue signifies the Brahman caste and also apparently helps to keep the houses cooler in the oppressive heat of the summer. Once again, the history of the Raja's influence over Jodhpur was very interesting and the lavishness of the palace was quite amazing. We also ventured into the large local bazaar were everything was for sale, including teeth extraction at a mere 10 rupee a tooth. Tiana loves a bargin, but even she couldn't be coerced to lying down on the dirty mat in street and having a tooth pulled. Given the fragile state of our stomachs at this point, the sweet corn and chicken soup was a real highlight on the menu for us. In the end even the soup turned on us (even the best of us have the occassional accident...don't they?) and we were faced with a 12 hour car journey back to Dehli where no fart could be trusted!!!!

More Jaipur

Jaipur- The Pink City

After viewing the Taj it was hard to get too excited about much else, although Jaipur was not without charm. From Agra to Jaipur we crossed the boarder into Rajasthan, desert country. There was quite a difference in both the landscape and the people here. The men wore very different turbans of extrememly long and brightly coloured material to keep the sun off there heads. There were lots of fancier moustaches too! Inside the walls of the oldest part of the city there remains a strict code on keeping everything painted pink. The Hawa Mahal (Wind Palace) is a very distinctive building in the old city. It was built to provide the palace women a place to gaze on the city below without being seen. Amber fort was also perched high above the city and gave excellent views of the surrounding landscape. We took an elephant ride to the top (it is very difficult to take good photos from the back of an elephant)and spent a few hours marvelling over extensive history of the palace and the spectacular views of the city. Jaipur had loads of other fascinating sight seeing opportunities such as the floating palace and Chokki Dani. Chokki Dani is Rajasthan's answer to 'Dreamworld', where you visit a replica village and get to experience aspects of the lifesyle of these people. After 2 days exploring we set off for our last stop: Jodhpur.

Sunrise over the Taj Mahal...breathtaking!

What more can we say? A picture tells 1000 words. Definitely one of the most amazing sights we have seen all trip.

Kochi and Allepy Backwaters

Our train arrived 2 hours late in Ernakulam at 4.15am. Thankfully our friend Sagai was still waiting patiently for us and had been since 2am. We ended up staying with Sagai at his Catholic seminary for 3 days and organised some local sight seeing from there. This included a day in Fort Kochi where we saw traditional Chinese fishing nets, visited a Jewish Synagoge, shopped for our winter UK wardrobes. We then had an overnight stay on a houseboat, cruising the backwaters of Allepy. This was lovely and relaxing and we got some great shots of the sunset over the rice fields.

While in Ernakulam we finalised our trip north and planned an itinarary with our own driver for our final 8 days which includes Delhi, Agra, Jaipur and Jodhpur.