We left Mumbai, and boarded a train to Ahmedabad. The train was good, although the journey felt long, 8hrs, although we were comfortable so shouldn't complain! Once we arrived in Ahmedabad station we waited for another hour before catching our night train to Udaipur.

Whilst sat at the platform, we were starred at constantly; I try to smile when I catch peoples glaring eyes, although I'm not sure why as they never smile back and then I feel like a right doughnut! ha! People are just curious I suppose. Anyway we boarded the night train and shared a room with two blokes who were headed our way for a training course. They were both really nice guys and chatted to us about India, England and our travels. One of the guys even read our palms! He managed to read that I am very indecisive, and Jon and I are apparently going to live long lives, till we are past 80!

We arrived at our destination at 8am after not a bad night's kip and were greeted by a rickshaw driver sent from our hotel. A nice guy again, who was a bit of a joker, and liked to make his words into little rhyming poems! He also quoted Forest Gump, and then stated that life is more like ice cream, you have to eat it up before it melts! He was a right character, who also gave us a few travel tips and made us chuckle alond the way! ha!

Udaipur is lovely. Very touristy but lovely, it's situated around a huge lake, where this morning we saw local women scrubbing their clothes clean in the water! The buildings are beautiful and the roads are like a maze, lots of little alleys and windy roads to explore, often with random buffaloes hanging about too. Whilst exploring these lanes a group of children all shook our hands and said hello, before requesting that we take a picture, I got my camera out and automatically huge grins were painted on their faces! They giggled at the picture and ran off all excited. We have visited the Palace and museum, which was also built like a maze; this was to apparently confuse any intruders and to prevent suprise attacks by the royalties enemies!

We watched the festival dancing in town, and it was great to be surrounded by so much colour and noise!! We stood by and observed the stick bashing dance! ha! This went on for quite some time!

Today (07/10/11) we went for an explore further out of town, more in the Indian areas, rather than the tourist zone. It was mental, mopeds and rickshaws everywhere, lots of honking, donkeys and Bulls wandering the streets! We walked for miles and came across a group banging drums and dancing, dressed in scary masks, as soon as they saw us we were grabbed and hugged, you couldn't help but jump along with them as they celebrated. We also looked at all of the shops, with all the amazing costume jewelery the women wear and the wedding outfits the men put on! There were also loads of shops selling spices and tea, the smells were mega.

Udaipur has been amazing. Been out for dinner, food was awesome, and we were the only whities in there, so it was propa authentic grub, instead of the tourist malrky ha! and only 4 quid!

Pushkar tomorrow!! xxx