Today's trip by road to Alwar was horrible. We were on the main highway to Delhi again for about 5 hours and then 2 hours on another less crowded highway to Alwar. It is incredible how many lorries/trucks are on the road here. Fortunately, the highway is divided, so you are spared having one trying to overtake another one whilst on your side of the road (you still have the occasional rogue car, bike or small truck taking a short cut on your side). For the most part the road surface is OK but there seems to be a lot of unfinished sections of about 200 - 300 m long and then you have to dive off on to a diversion bumpy single lane track for a while.

We were treated to our first go at level crossings today. The traffic lines up (loosing speaking of course) facing each other on both sides of the barrier, each lot occupying the entire road - buses, lorries, cars, motorbikes, bicycles, tuk tuks, rickshaws and pedestrians. When the train passes and barrier goes up, we all surge together (much like a rugby scrum) and, with much honking and manouvering, seem to sort ourselves out slowly (usually in the middle of the tracks) into 2 separate opposing lanes of traffic.

Finally made it to Alwar, a biggish town, but did not stop there. Instead we carried on further into the countryside to our hotel Alwar Bagh which is built in a heritage style. It is surrounded by the Aravalli mountains.

Too late to start our jeep safari to the Siska Tiger Reserve today so we have agreed to set off at 05:45 am tomorrow (ugh!).

We spent the rest of the afternoon having lunch (at 3:00 pm) and elected to have a cheese sandwich (nothing to go wrong there). Could not have it grilled (as shown on the menu) but could have it toasted - what's the difference - our griller is not working. Our sandwich arrived and I could not see any cheese between the slices of pale toast. Oh that's the cheese there (a few whisps of grated cheese sprinkled over the toast with slices of tomato and cucumber instead between the slices. Sorry I don't want the tomato and cucumber but I would like some more CHEESE and please make the bread a bit browner. OK - off he went - came back with, guess what, grilled cheese sandwiches. The griller had made a miraculous recovery.

We both had a pleasant surprise, both John and Clive were able to call us from Lo Manthang where they are having a couple of rest days before their return trek to Jomson. Both sounded well and happy, though the walking and effort has been hard. The rest of their group also fared well and nobody suffered any altitude problems. It was great to be able to have a quick chat with them.

Had a good curry dinner, fixed up some bananas for the morning, arranged our early morning call, got Rosie's hot water problem fixed then off to bed.