Final report on our trip to Rajasthan now coming up ... we spent our last night in Udaipur having dinner with the manager of the hotel, interesting trying to hold a conversation, especially when he thought we were travel agents bringing business his way in the future ! The next day we headed off for Bundi, stopping at Chittogarh on the way, where we spent a couple of hours admiring more Jain temples (definitely my favourite architecture in India). After a long da...

Taking a break from the volunteer work for a couple of weeks, we have been very busy off touring around the states of Madhya Pradesh & Rajasthan with my friend Indu. We went to Deogarh to see some 11th century temples which were pretty spectacular, followed by a visit to the home of our friend Beeru's future wife ... they haven't set an engagement date yet, as they will have to get married within one month of this date as per Indian custom, but he definitely look...

Another 11 days has flown past, our time in India is running out very quickly now, probably because we are enjoying it so much ... but we will definitely be back ! We went to Ruby's 18th and were sat in a back room to eat the food before everyone else, with twice as much food as everyone else was given, the custom in India for visitors as they treat them like gods. The next day we went to visit Anil and his wife and their new baby daughter Tassou, she looked much...

The past few days have been a mixture of highs and lows. There have been about half a dozen days in the past 10 weeks when I have wondered if I am making any progress at all, with two of these days happening this week ! Of course, when I look back on my diary as I type it each week, I am constantly reminded of the improvements that we have made in such a short time and yes it is all definitely worth it. Sometimes it's just listening to other people that say thing...

I got to the airport with three hours to spare before Pete's plane arrived, so I sat and chatted to a nice guy at the Hotel Reservation Desk and he got us booked into a hotel for about 2/3 the price of what the hotel had quoted me on the phone. I then went and had a really nice meal in the Airport Restaurant, best one of these I've ever eaten in ! It took Pete an hour to get his bags and then another hour later we finally got to the hotel at 2:30am, where we were...