22:45 Thursday 7th November (Continuing from where I finished in the last post) No luck getting the train, I'm on a bus but will try to carry on from where I was (still trying to catch up to where we really are)…. So we rode an elephant to the entrance and into the fort, which was just like a tuktuk….haha no just kidding it was nothing like that. It was great and feels really high. Our elephant was called Champa and was almost a baby, but still massive. Piyush and I rode up to the top on her (about 20 minutes) with the dude on the front (driver? Haha, a mahut Piyush corrects me) guiding the way. The fort was nice, and different to the ones before, with small corridors winding around it. A great smaller fort where I took loads of pictures again and read a lot about it. I won't go in to the history of everything, but you should see it and experience it instead of me doing it an injustice. So we eventually left and got the tuktuk back with the same guy. Along the way Piyush was keen to get some fabric, and Jodhpur is famous for fabrics for which he was keen to get some for his mother. I also thought it would be good to get some. Piyushs mother intends to make some pyjamas so he bought some and I got some others fabrics (we can make a pillow it Vicki). There was loads, floor to ceiling, at the place our top dude tuktuk driver took us. Usually it would be a tuktuk driver takes tourist to some friend/relative where he has some deal going on with the owns and makes a cut, but not this guy…he was a genuinely a nice guy and took us to a government quality controlled place and piyush knew this was the good local stuff. On the way back we went out the way to Hawa Mahal palace where the Queen could observe the normal city folk from above without being seen (strange shutter type windows….looked nice), as it was on the side of the road and basically in the middle of the market. I took some photos and we went on. On the way back in the afternoon we grab a couple of beers from a place (rare to find, but as we were passing why not), went back to the hotel where we had already persuaded them of a later checkout (3pm). We went to an Airtel office to try and sort some phone credit and my SIM out without luck, so went back up to pack our stuff. We also needed to book our accom in Jodhpur which was not so easy. But we made our list of 3 places again, including a fort, and crazy looking little place, and a simple very cheap place. Foreign cards and issues with most things (like I said, nothing is easy - even with piuyush), made everything take ages. In fact we ran out of time and they wanted us out the room. We hadn't been treated very well at all at this place, for example the guy on reception the night before made us book through tripadvisor right in front of him because he wouldn't match the price, and then when I asked for 2 keys not just 1, he said the locks only allow one key, which I had to laugh at as I'm very used to hotels with similar locking systems - sorry that sounds big headed of me, but after a minute of laughing and telling I know it can work he actually apologised and gave me a second key. We tried to finish our planning asap here which took much longer than expected but we didn't care too much for this place and outstaying our welcome. All was fair, but for once we left somewhere feel we were the ones taking advantage for a change. Good old tuktuk guy (we cant remember his name) was waiting for us as he said he would be and we left that place. Somehow I lost my damn micro usb cable to charge my phone somewhere back in Agra (I think it was the girl that searched my back overly thoroughly when we went into the Taj), anyway we asked our man to try and find somewhere we could buy one and help us on a place to get something to eat before our train that evening (to Jodhpur). The dude found us a great place to eat (even some western music was playing - led zeppelin), and said he'd go and find a cable and have it by the time we're done. This guy had helped us out loads of times during the day and without any hassle - although we don't remember his name (terrible I know), we had grown pretty fond of this guy and Piyush chatted away with him each trip. This was his first tuktuk he bought just recently after driving taxis, and although he had a disability with his leg and some troubles he was a happy friendly guy. His leg, and an injury, forced him out of taxi driving and this was his new venture as you don't need to use foot pedals to drive. As a 25 year old guy (although looked much older), with a 2 year old daughter and some issues, he clearly didn't have the easiest of lives, yet he was genuine….maybe the tuktuk life hadn't taken its toll yet I don't know. He didn't have a phone (we wanted his number earlier in the day), but after buying the tuktuk he was saving his money for a phone next. Anyway, we had some food at this place playing the good music and came out to meet him….he had a micro usb cable in hand….legend! We went on our last trip with him to the station in his tuktuk and he took us right in to further than most. Piyush and I had already had a brief chat about paying this guy and what we should expect to pay considering he's done a fair (but not very long) rides throughout the day. I said let's ask him what he wants, which we did. The dude wouldn't say, and that anything is fine. Piyush had already said probably 2-4,000Rs was probably fair going rate early, but I wanted to know what the guy was really after which is why we asked him. He would not give us a price so we gave him 1,000. He took it and was fine with it, gave the usual indian side to side head shake and said ok. Of course Piyush and I were just joking and couldn't watch this for more than 5 seconds before giving him another 5,000Rs as we intended and thanking him profusely for being such a great driver and helpful guy. We wished him fair well and were off. So we got to the station and fortunately for us being on the waiting list had paid off, we had a space on the train (sort of). We had wanted sleeper class with AC but had been told we are more likely to get a ticket if we go with a sleeper without AC (SL3 I think it's called). It's not hot this time of year so it's not like we need AC, but its slightly more expensive, and because of that it's likely to have less people and separated from the other carriages (to keep the cool AC air in), and so be a bit more spacious. But we didn't have the AC sleeper class, as we wanted to increase our chances of getting a ticket. We waited for the train, it arrived about half hour late and we got on. It was packed, overly packed. We found what should be our beds and of course like everywhere there were people all over them (top and bottom bunks). We gave up on the top bunk almost immediately. With the bottom bunk being easier to access but equally packed (at least 3 on) we made it clear enough that we had a ticket for that. They didn't have tickets at all like most of them (which became obvious), and although I don't want to kick an older (not old, but older than me) lady off the bed, I had to get at least some space. She looked at me like "good luck getting some space from me foreigner", but we had our bags (we have our big bags we use for hiking/camping at home plus a second rucksack each). So when we started to lump our bags in the tiny spaces left between their legs they started to make some room. After a lot of shuffling for space I had my bags in a kinda safe location next to me. Although I've made sure I didn't bring anything of significant value because I rather travel with cheap everything (camera etc - btw this laptop is piyush's which he never returned to our old work) Piyush warned of a lot of thieves on the trains taking anything, and as basic as most my stuff is I kind of need everything. After a couple of stops more people had got off than on, so the lady moved and I had one end of the bed and piyush had the other which we made do with (plus our bags). I was reluctant to take piyush's advice and flip the bed up to have smaller seats early, but we did this eventually and had more room (hard to explain the layout, but it worked better). We arrived in Jodhpur after 5 hours and Piyush managed to book us a night in the crazy place of the 3 we had written down earlier. Somehow the guy heard piyush over the noise (we were by the window and the train blasts its horn just as often as the tuktuks), and he even sent us an SMS to say it's booked and someone will pick us up at the station. Good job they did, because we would never have found the place. When we got off the train at 23:00 I think, I was knackered (we both were), no space to sleep properly and noisy. A guy found us and took us to the place in his tuktuk. When we arrived at the small hotel/homestead we had taken some of the craziest small streets which was like a maze (the whole city was like this), and went in. It was a very strange place and we met the owner, who we sat pretty much in silence for about 10 minutes with….we didn't know what was going on. Old guns and sitars on the wall in a narrow but tall building, actually there was loads of old stuff everywhere. After about 20 minutes we had come to realise this owner guy (I forget his name) was actually really nice, so was the whole place and very unique. He showed us around and about 5 floors to the top (probably 10 rooms in the place) had a great view all around and hundreds of places all connected by these small alley roads. We could see a couple of forts, mosques, and endless building of just below our level (which wasn't very high). There are so many forts in India, I never realised, and the perception on hearing this could be "oh yet another fort", but these forts are nothing like each other except they generally all have a great view over which ever land they were ruling, and being obviously (and purposely) dominating. Nobody would have guessed (piyush just happen to remember…no idea how) that this main fort here was the one they had a massive hole in which they used in the recent Batman: Dark Night Rising, where batman is stuck down and has to get out of a massive hole (which is actually well). Even though it was late and I was knackered the owner dude suggested having a beer up the top and appreciating the night view, plus the air was much seemed much fresher and cleaner than anywhere yet I had been in India. Great idea we couldn't refuse. Next day (today as I type this) we walked a lot, and saw some amazing sights after walking up the fort. We tried to find the Batman well but it was not commonly known (somewhere in the main fort the internet said), and an old guy piyush spoke to said there are absolutely loads of wells around there because it gets so hot in the summer and there is no main water supply (such as river) for most the area. We were out walking by 8:00 this morning and somehow things went in our favour for a change. An old man told us to go up this one way to the fort and only when we were coming down did we see the hordes of (99.9% Indian) tourists coming from the actual "main" way all queuing and buying tickets. We hadn't needed to buy tickets our way, plus there was nobody on the probably more beautify route up…..result! I also called the commissioner of Arunachal on the way up the fort to find out how we were looking for my permit to Arunachal and Tawang. Great success!...she said I'm good and we can collect it whenever we want, so our plan to collect it on Friday was still on. Today was much hotter, and our way down was a hot one without much shade, and with the small roads and alleys like a maze we got lost straight away (from above it looks simple, but from the bottom it's much much harder…..as is life I guess). This wasn't helped by our friend Laith back in Sydney who borrowed Piyush's car posting a picture on facebook of Piyush's car on the back of a trailer (I won't even start with details behind that…). Since we didn't have our train until 20:00 and it was probably a bit after midday, getting lost was fine by us and all part of the fun. We went to another place (Umaid Bhavan Palace) which we could see in the distance from Merangarh fort (from there it looked like a hundred miles away and like a mirage), and was in fact much closer (10k's or something). This place was built by the ruler of Jodhpur and is another demonstration of wealth, including a display of their vintage (e.g. Rolls Royce) cars. There are actually some rooms you can stay in here that are 350,000Rs a night….expensive by any normal persons standards (we paid 1850Rs for the night at our place - our place was better than bob basic standard). It was a long day today and we walked around a lot, just about everywhere. So around 16:00 we went back to our place as our bags were still there and we needed to charge some of our things. We were still on the waiting list for the 20:00 train to Delhi which would get us in for 6:45, and had time to kill, so why not go to the rooftop again and have a beer, try to write a bit of this blog (the previous couple of posts) and sort out our plans. Time got closer and we went from 9 in the waiting list to 6….19:00 came and we were still 6 in line. Regardless, we went to the station in hope of getting on, and this time the tuktuk ride was the craziest yet….Firstly we walked a bit and found a random one but was going in the wrong direction so we gestured to him to turn around and we'd talk, but this guy encouraged us over and met Piyush's price demands almost immediately. We got in and he did a 180 spin on the spot, to which I said "damn look at this turning circle…wow", Piyush said almost immediately "you're going to regret commending him on his driving mate", and he was right. Smiling in his mirror back at me he took off and drove like crazy, and by now this was the third time here I've thought either I or someone else will surely die on this trip. The alleys and side roads are barely even roads, and packed out with the usual mopeds, people, cows, dogs, goats, rubbish, holes, kids, the odd horse and trailer and just about everything else, but this guy drove like a mad man on a mission. God knows how he didn't kill at least something. I don't know, maybe he did. What was suggested by the owner of where we stayed would take 20 minutes took about 2, and we were at the station. Checking out tickets and we were out of luck again, we could not get on the train as we were still 6/7th on the waiting list. So things went on, and Piyush tried hard to beg, bribe and play the game to try and get us on but it didn't go our way. The plan was to arrive in Delhi station at 6:45 Friday morning so we could go to the Arunachal commissioner, but we literally watched the train leave by the end. Piyush, at this stage, was pissed off because everything and everyone did not go in our favour. He often talks about how he hates Indians. Our only option was to get a bus (at 22:00) and Piyush managed to book us 2 seats, yet nobody seemed to know (even the ticket) where the bus station was. When we finally got a break and made it to the bus station it was about 21:15….at this point Piyush had decided we're getting a strong whiskey somewhere, anywhere, before we leave on the long journey. So a tuktuk guy tuk us to a government bar where the police or officials drink (I don't even know how that works), and we had a couple of quick but strong Indian whiskeys which I hadn't tried before. Piyush managed to persuade the bar guy to fill a small bottle with a bit more for the road. Back at the bus stop our journey looked like this….Get the 10pm bus from here in Jodhpur to Jaipur getting in a 4am, then wait 2 hours at the bus stop then get the 6am bus to Delhi getting in around 11am. I'm the only white/westerner I've seen in a while and we try to use it to our advantage (sounds terrible I know), but Piyush managed to persuade the bus driver to stop at some point somewhere we could get some food, and sure enough he did. We then stopped again an hour or so later where the drive came with Piyush and I and bought us an tea each. He used to be an electrician but got to a point where he said he'd never work for anyone (and have a boss) again. It was funny as when we three walked back to the bus somebody sounded the bus horn and the driver who was with us was laughing asking why they would bother and that he is the bus driver and he calls the shots. It is now 3:20 Friday morning and I'm pretty sure other than the driver I'm the only other one awake…..no idea how as the road is bumpy as hell and the horns be a blasting. But I shall try to sleep….I'm knackered. ====================