Namaste

Since we last updated we had a stop over in Ranakphur before heading to our current city of Udaipur where we are currently boiling to death!!!

Ranakphur was only a tiny place with really only one main sight to see and that was the largest Jain Temple in India. It is built from white marble, to enter you must cover your legs and remove your shoes but also leave any water outside.

Once inside the place is just full of white marble carvings and it has 1144 pillars each one with a different carving on but it was also so cool inside and we both felt like lying face down on the marble to cool off!!!

After here we took a walk round the lake which was pretty dried up but it did have crocodiles in it. If you are like Mel and I we did not even know that they had crocs in India!!! They were swimming around and trying to catch the local water birds. By now our feet had got so hot we had to return to the hotel to cool down. Our room had a great window seat where you could open up the windows and let the breeze in, or sit in the garden under the pagoda drinking lime sodas.

From Ranakphur we took the 90km drive to Udaipur. It took us over 2 hours as we passed through small villages and nearly ran a goat over. The roads here were bumpy and also dusty so we spent most of the journey winding our windows up and down to let the cool in and keep the dust out!!!

For those of you that don't know Udaipur is famous for being the location that was used to film the James Bond movie "Octop**** and you can watch the movie anywhere everynight of the week!!!!

We had a delicious lunch (curry again, that is 8 straight days for lunch and dinner!!!) then took a walk around the Palace. It was OK to look around but not as good as some of the forts we have seen but it kept us in the shade for a while.

Tomorrow we are planning to spend the day looking around the lake and then the shops (sorry Hazel!!) before taking in the views from our rooftop restaurant and just relaxing as the car journeys can be quite stuffy with no air con or radio!!!

India is still mad and crazy, but really good fun with friendly people, we have one more week with Raju before taking the overnight train to Varanasi for 2 days then our flight to Kathmandu.

Lots of love

M & M

xx