Nameste!

Fist up, India has a few infrastructure problems! Water, electricity and of course internet are up and down at random intervals, which has meant that finding a computer with an internet speed even as fast as the dial-up mum and dad have at home has been an effort to say the least, but here we are and it didn't take half an hour to log in!

Though we've been here only a week, it feels like much longer. The 'group thang' was the best decision we could have made when coming to this 'mad as a bag of sacks' place. We've ended up with a great bunch of people, an Australian couple about our age who have alot of experience at this kind of thing, 2 girls from Bucks who are good fun, a brave Oz girl doing the solo thing, 2 Norwegian girls, and 3 Dane guys! All bring something to the table, and it's been alot of fun sharing all this new stuff with them. Our guide Sanjay is a really sweet and knowledgeabe guy, answering all questions we have from where to get the best Lasse (no - not the dog, but a beautiful drink which makes you put on weight just looking at it!) to why there are over 330,000 Hindu gods! All in all the group thing has given us courage to be in places and do things we'd never have contemplated alone (a local bus ride in Delhi for example, much scarier than it sounds!

Everything is weird and wonderful. Roads are manic, the motorbikes and autorickshaws with their horns are headache inducing, the food is mind blowing, the people are friendly and chatty (they're invariaby trying to sell you something but really don't mind if you don't want a leather satchel for your 'lovely laptop'). Highlights so far have included; spending last night under the stars in the Thar desert with some Rajistan musicians (a Indian Flute Player who was a circular breathing genius!) though a rogue desert dog made sleeping difficult as he kept wanting to get in our beds or steal our bags (one girl had her blanket stolen off her and James had to run out into the dark cold night in just his thermals to retreive it!!) but the stars were unbelievable! Rickshaw riding down the wrong side of the road in Old Delhi (driver simply shouting 'It's quick this way, it's quick this way!'), the Eagles of Delhi just being amazingly graceful things to watch! The smells from spicy nice to spicy not so nice in a footstep, A 22 hour train ride (ok that wasn't a highlight that was plain painful! All the girls were scared of the coackraoches scampering about and couldn't believe it when they found out the next day that the boys had seen some mice, but had kept it a secret!), Our guesthouse in Jaisalimer (the most beautiful place we have been so far, and will take some beating, an ancient fort with really sweet views!), drinking sweet Chai from a street vendor (Jem and I have gone Chai MAD! and you can keep your PG tips!), the list is madly long and it's only been a week!

We're off to see Jodhpur fort tomorrow, then we move on to Jaipur for cookery classes after that!

We're missing everyone, but making sure we're getting lots of stories for when we're back!

More when there's more (or when we find another decent internet connection!)

JnJ