Day 21

Clover's 7th birthday! We decided to celebrate by spending the day at 'Funworld - Where You Can Express Your Feelings!'. It is billed as Jodhpur's answer to Alton Towers. Unfortunately, it was absolutely awful. Rufus and I spent the day thinking up alternative taglines such as 'Funworld - A Spectacular Misnomer!' and 'Funworld - a series of bio and trip hazards with an entry fee!'. 'Funworld - A risk assessor's wet dream!'
We should have realised when we arrived and it was £1.40 to get in - for all of us. The girls had to swim in two inches of water shared with tadpoles, algae and the odd fish. Fern spent most of the day in tears. Clover was none the wiser and thought it was loads of fun. We all particularly enjoyed the electricity cables running alongside the pool,
the cows wandering through the park and the 'chef' chopping cabbage with
one hand in his trousers. As we queued in 40 degree heat for some 'chow mein' (the only thing on the menu), while being stared at by people literally standing only
inches away (even the waiter stood, completely still beside us for TEN MINUTES), Fern sobbing having banged her head on a rusty water slide and the toilet being an open sewer, Rufus sure enough, began to express his feelings, as the day had promised.
We came home a little dejected to find that our guesthouse had laid on the biggest chocolate cake EVER for Clover's birthday and that many more parcels had arrived from friends and family. Thank you everyone!
The next day we got up to head off to Khimsar Fort. As we were going to stay in a luxury heritage hotel for 2 days, I insisted we went on the local bus, thus retaining my principles. A little luxury has to begin with a little misery for one to truly appreciate it. The locals were indeed surprised to find four hot, cross Westerners on their bus
and we discovered 60 minutes into a 90 minute journey that we had no idea how to find our stop. Eventually the conductor guessed we must be going to the luxury fort retreat and slowed down just enough to throw us all off in the tiny, dusty village of Khimsar. Rufus has gone out for bottles of Sprite to avoid paying exorbitant hotel prices, and to
proudly hold on to a little bit of Scottishness. Plan for the weekend = absolutely nothing. Bring it on.