On our last day in Udaipur we finally organised a day trip to Ranakpur, a raved about jain temple complex 90km from Udaipur. We hired a taxi and it took 2hrs but it was worth it. We arrived and were told that Ian had to cover his bottom legs so he had to wear a silly pair of blue trousers (much to my enjoyment). The main temple is a huge beautifully kept temple with 400 columns most of which are intricately carved, there are ...

We woke on Holi in anticipation of chaos, poor old Chris had definitely got food poisoning and had had an awful night in the bathroom so after breakfast we sent him to bed and hung around, many groups of people were arriving at the rooftop of our hotel drenched in paint of every colour imaginable. We had bought 4 bags of paint ourselves ready for our turn. Looking off the roioftops we could see families throwing paint and buckets of water all over eachother. T...

HAPPY 30th Birthday to Ian XXX We woke up late on my birthday and had a really lazy morning with no sightseeing or planning on the agenda. Bliss. Towards lunch Chris, Emma, Claire and myself headed out in our best Indian togs for a posh lunch at the Sunset terrace at the City Palace. On the way, and before we got drunk we stopped off at a few shops for some heavy bartering for some really cheap 'to be destroyed at Holi' clothes. I bought an extremely tastles...

We all arrived in Udaipur an hour early 6:30am, and caught a taxi with a big sikh guy back to lal ghat. We ended up after a complete hoooha of price changes and room changes all booking into the poonam haveli and all getting food then sleeping for hours. We just pottered and left Ian internetting while we all went off sneakily to organise his present, I (Claire) went and found a little silver man and got a money clip to be made for Ian with a tiger eye stone and...

we arrived at eth station an hour early and were told to walk down to wrong end of the platform and found ourselves running past 12 sleeper carriages with all our stuff including the huge picnic that Sanjay had packed for us. By teh time we got to our carriage they blew the whistle and the train had pulled away. Ian lept on but I (claire) tried but fell back. Luckily my rucksack stopped me from falling out completely. A guard stood with his arms folded and a big...