Got up nice and early this morning as we wanted to visit the Meherangarh Fort. We left at 8.30 hoping it would not be as hot... wrong again! We took the 20 minute walk up to the fort and paid the usual inflated prices (10 times what the locals are expected to pay!) and spent the the next hour taking a tour around the fort. We were back at the guest house for 11.00am desperate to escape the heat. We went up to the roof terrace in the guest house for our tea where ...

We woke the following morning to find it had started to heat up. We waited until 16:00 before venturing out, hoping the temperature would cool over the next few hours........WRONG. It was unbearable, mid-40s it turned out according the to local paper the day after! We left the heat as often as possible, sat down and a few drinks, and enjoyed a local disk Thali (a combination of vegetarian dishes , chutneys, pickles, etc). On the way back to the room found some ne...

After a nightmare journey, feeling filthy, irritable and very tired (after only 2 hours sleep) we arrived in Jodhpur. The first task was to find somewhere to stay which proved very difficult as taxi drivers cannot be trusted to take you were you ask. We eventually got to the guest house we wanted to stay at and we soon realised how much nicer Jodhpur was than Mumbai. Our evening was spent wandering around the huge town market where we managed to pick up some clot...

We were back at Mumbai station 6.00am feeling tired and grumpy. We then hung around for 9 hours, getting lost before boarding another train at 3.00 pm. Unfortunately we had been forced to downgrade train class and now had to share a none a/c carriage with some very dodgy looking people! Although lively, with many interesting people passing through the train this was the last thing we needed as we had now not slept for 19 hours!

Leaving Goa today after spending a couple of days settling into India and planning the next stage of our trip. We'd done quite well, considering its monsoon season, to avoid rain until the last evening when the heavens opened and were soaked! By morning the main road had turned into a river which we had to wade through to catch the bus to the train station ready for a night booking. We are now reluctantly heading back to Mumbai. As Rachael refused to stay a night...