From Udaipur, we travelled onto Pushkar. Its another town based around a lake, and is really religious. There are ghats round the lake, where people come from all over the country and bathe in the sacred lake. There were people and cows in the lake which was cool to see, but not sure how hygenic it was!! It was a pretty touristy town but had a nice vibe, though all the tourists seemed to be hippies with dreadlocks, so I felt quite out of place hehe!

Our next stop was the final bit of the golden triangle of tourist India, Jaipur. Its called the Pink City, though its city walls are actually terracotta! Whilst the sites (Amer Fort and the Monkey Temple) were the best sites we'd seen, I didn't actually like the city. We did go to the cinema to watch a Bollywood film though, which was hilarious. The cinema itself was more like a theatre in design and the film had an interval. Everyone talked and cheered loudly throughout, there was a guy shrieking hysterically behind me whenever anything funny happened (there were no subtitles, so I assume he was laughing at the funny bits), and there was a guy who danced in the aisles during the music bits. The bollywood dancing scenes just randomly appeared in the film, with no obvious reference to the film. The acting was also really bad and slapstick, and the quality of the cinemography was awful (plus there was a pigeon flying through the cinema). We stayed for 1.5 hours until the interval and then snuck off to Maccie ds! I'm glad we experienced it, but don't think I'll ever become a fan of Bollywood!

From Jaipur we went to Bharatpur which is only worth a mention for the nice hotel we stayed in, and from there was the short bus ride to Agra. Although we've been lucky with our public transport so far (except for the weird guy sitting by me on one of the buses), we had to travel on a very local bus to Agra. We were driving for half an hour before we turned back as the bus was faulty. After 10 minutes back at the bus station, the bus was deemed to be fixed and off we went.

Obviously there is only one reason to visit Agra and thats the Taj Mahal. We got up at 5.30am this morning to see it at sunrise. We were first in the queue and though we finally got in after the actual sunrise (not that it mattered, as the sun doesn't rise or set over the building), it was amazing to be the first people to see it. We managed to see it without anyone else (at first) and that was definitely worth the lack of sleep, it was so peaceful! It completely lived up to its reputation, its beautiful and pretty magical, the best thing for a mile in India.

We've got an overnight train journey tonight to Varanasi (we've bought vodka for this trip!), which is another place I'm looking forward to. They'll be celebrating Holi Festival when we're there (which basically involved throwing powder and squirting water at everyone in the streets), so we're planning to join in! After that it'll be Calcutta where the trip ends and then Suzanne and I will be exploring the south for a couple of weeks.

I'm enjoying India thus far (its pretty similar to parts of Africa with the dirt and chaos, so that hasn't shocked me), but I'm definitely looking forward to the south. I'm a bit templed out and the cities are all pretty similar, so I'm looking forward to experiencing a different type of India! xx