Hello all, hope everyone is well.  So we loved Jodhpur, climbed the fort on the 14th, it towers 600ft above the city on this rock outcrop.  Incredible views from the battlements, the city stretched for miles and beyond that, desert.  The houses were all square or rectangular, and mostly blue.  This is 'cos its traditionally a high caste colour, and also it's thought to repel insects.  This wasn't good enough for Katie though, so she decided to invent her own reason, this being that the colour reflects the sky!  Bless her hehe.

We decided to head north, to the Punjab.  We'd read about an interesting city, called Chandigarh.  It was India's first planned city and was described to us as very green, spacious and with a lack of cows (bloody things are everywhere else - we unwittingly walked into the middle of a cow orgy in a street in Jodhpur!  They weren't happy...)  Well anyway, a 20 hour train journey and 1000 kms later we arrived.  We were gonna stay 2 nights but that quickly got chopped down to one!  The whole city was built from concrete and the main attraction was the court house, built from...concrete, and it looked just the same as verything else.  It was much greener and cleaner than everywhere else we'd been, but there was no escapng the fact that it was just an Indian Milton Keynes.

So we too the first bus we could find to Shimla.  It was a very scenic journey up through the foothills of the Himalayas.  Incredible views, but also terifyingly sheer drops!  And of course we had the standard issue suicidal bus driver...Katie was quite green by the end of the journey!  Shimla is a hill station, it was the summer capital during the British Raj era, and so it's full of strangely English buildings, like somebody transferred part of Stratford into the Himalayas!

Our hotel is pretty nice, gorgeous views.  The temperture is such a relief as well.  We've had temperatures of 30 C plus everywhere we've been, but here its really pleasant.  Having said that it's been raining today..No wonder the British liked it!  Today we went to see the 'Monkey Temple', which was an hours walk up the steepest hills I have ever had the misfortune of seeing!  Our legs were killing us by the time we got up, and we were disappointed to find that it was actually pretty crap!  But there were loads of monkeys around which was kinda cool.  Only kinda because they're aggressive little b*****s who try to steal your sunglasses and camera!  We couldn't face another walk down so i bartered with a taxi driver and got us a cheap ride down.

I do like the monkeys, it feels like we're in an open zoo though, and Katie's so excited about them that she points out every single one.  "Look at that monkey"..."Richard, guess what..." hmm, a monkey maybe?  One was even trying to get in through our window the other day in the middle of the night!

On Saturday we leave Shimla and head south.  We have a journey of about 2000 kms ahead of us to get down to Goa.  Can't wait tho, we are gonna put in some serious beach time!  Planning on staying in a beachside hut, should be really good.  So until next time take care!