Wednesday 7th November Cont…

Trying to catch up on writing this to where we are actually right now still and I will continue from where I left it (Monday November 5th 21:30 at Jaipur train station).

So the train we wanted wasn't possible. The next option was a train at 2:30am, and would get us to Jaisalmur around midday and later than we had wanted to get there. This would mean spending five hours waiting around and less time in Jaisalmur. Extending our time in Jaisalmur was not an option as we needed to get back to Delhi by the end of the week to get my permit for Arunachal (if they will let us).

After discussing, we decided to stay in Jaipur that night and miss Jaisalmur…there was basically not the time, plus the station closed at 22:00 and we would have been hanging around with nowhere to go for hours killing time (and getting hassled).

We found a random hotel to stay at and got a tuktuk there. As I've mentioned, there is a usual hassle with everything (especially to do with prices of anything), and with so much to write about I won't keep talking about each situation. Part of my intention in writing this was to write about my opinions and how I felt about places we go and things we do, but unfortunately I haven't been able to do this properly so far as we have been non-stop busy and there are way too many things to write about and no time to do it.

Anyway, we had one night in Jaipur although it was already at least 22:30. We took a short walk and found a rooftop bar, here we ate and had a few drinks. I also wrote up some of the earlier blog, and it was here which I mentioned in the earlier blog that they started to want to get us out as it was getting late. We went back to the hotel and pretty much drank the small minibar (it was cheap) and discussed our plans.

Got up around 7:30 and finished breakfast by 8:30. Luck was on our side for once as we found the best tuktuk driver yet, and ended up using him most the day.

First thing we needed to do was go back to the train station and book a ticket to Jodhpur (this was our new plan since Jaisalmur wasn't possible), and also book a train from Jodhpur back to New Delhi in time to meet the commissioner for Arunachal to go to Tawang.

For both tickets we got on the waiting list only. Not much we could do but to wait and find out later.

So we had the day to make the most of Jaipur (yesterday)…

There is Amber Fort in Jaipur, this is from the 16th century if I remember and built by a Rajput king. It was a bit different, and on the way we stopped briefly to get some photos of a snake charmer playing a sapera…..had to do it. Then when we were next to (below) Amber Fort where we rode an elephant up to the fort entrance.

----Got to stop here to try and get a train. It is 18:30 Thursday 7th.