We left Khajuraho for our long journey to Varanassi. Disaster struck immediately as we left our hotel to head to the bus station. Me and Lauren both piled into an old rickety cycle rickshaw complete with our big rucksacks. There was hardly any space and we were both perched on to the seat. The driver picked up a bit too much speed then made a sharp turn throwing Lauren from the rickshaw, bags and shoes flying through the air! Luckily she only sustained some minor...

After spending a day and night in Delhi, where we caught up with some fellow travellers, had a cocktail in QBar and spent a rather long time waiting on Ali to organise our tickets and vouchers for the rest of the trip, we were on a 6am train to Jhansi. This came after the news the night before showing scenes from the Mumbai train incident which went on fire. Needless to say we were pretty nervous about the journey. However, everything went smoothly. The train sta...

Basically there wasn't much to do in Bikaner. I think we mainly stopped there to break up the journey between Jaisemler and Mandawa. We arrived late in the afternoon and much to our delight were staying in a lovely hotel. We had some dinner in the nice restaurant in the hotel where a wedding party were also eating. There saris were beautiful and one of the aunties even came over to speak. After dinner we were delighted to discover we had a movie channel in our ro...

Our arrival in Jaisalmer didn't go quite to plan. We arrived at our supposed hotel and it was a complete flea pit! Now maybe we had just been a bit spoiled with our previous few hotels....but this one was awful. I had trouble trying to work out whether it was in fact a hotel. It looked like a building site. Dirt everywhere, no apparent reception. Our room hadn't even been cleaned since the previous occupants. They hadn't even put any effort into trying to pretent...

We spent one night in Jodhpur, but was definitely worth visiting if not only for the incredible Meherangarh Fort. It is an amazing fort which stands above the city on a huge rock. The Rough Guide to India describes it perfectly as 'the epitome of Rajput power and extravagance, its ramparts towering a labyrinthine, blue-painted old city'. Now by the time we arrived in Jodphur we had visited a great number of forts... but I've got to say this one one is pretty damn...