17th March-

After some rather strange Malarone enduced dreams, we awoke to a hectic day of sightseeing in Jodphur. Today we visited the Umaid Bhawan Palace, which is still inhabited by the royal residence of Jodphur. It is half hotel and half royal residence, and has 26 aches of grounds. It was a magnificence building and very interesting in its history.

Then we visited the Royal Cremation Temple, which is next to Jodphur fort, and we had a great time utilising the ‘high speed shutter’ application on my camera by jumping off of this sacred building and doing funny faces. Gotta love that camera setting, fills the dullest of moments. Saying that though- It was a beautiful temple….

The we went to Mehrangarh Fort, which was built in 1459 AD. We were shocked at the number of people gathered outside, and were very excited to find out that a major Bollywood movie was being filmed that day! It was a film called “Brave”, and from what I could tell it seemed to involve a lot of horses and soldiers and a half naked main character who was actually pretty well built for an Indian. Anyway, we dooned our rather fetching audio guides (looked sexy I must say… felt like a proper tourist!) and began a long tour of the Fort. There were spectacular views of the ‘blue city’- so called as wealthy, Hindu familes would paint their houses blue. We learnt about the Maharaja and his wives, with more grim stories of how if he died, all the wives would have to sit on his cremation bed in silence and be ‘engulfed by the flames’ as the audio guide so nicely put it. We learnt about Palanquins and day to day life, abit about war etc… all interesting stuff that I am sure wikipedia will tell you about as I am in abit of a rush haha.

When the tour was over we walked back through the clock tower market and had a chilled evening of shisha smoking a ‘kingfisher beer’. Despite a mild stocmach upset, I am in fairly good order, and enjoying Rajesthan.

Hope you are all well, will update you on Udaipur tomorrow, as we only just arrived here. Another 6 hour car journey today… was a blast! Nevertheless, both Amos and I are in good spirits!
Love xxxx