Sunday 25th January

Up early again this morning picked up guide and went to Amber palace.We walked up to the palace although there was the option to go up on an elephant.The palace was quite high up and surrounded by a wall all around on the hills.Behind the palace was the Amber city, where the houses that were once occupied by tradesmen had been left to rack and ruin, when the Maharajah abandoned the city and moved to a new palace, in now what is the city of Jaipur and the people followed him. The palace was very opulent with its marble and paintings.

We saw the floating palace on the lake which they are planning to restore.

We were taken to a little known temple called Gaitor monuments which is a royal cremation site, to see some of the finest marble carvings in India.

We later went to the Albert Hall, which is where the city museum is and was opened by Prince Albert (Queen Victoria's son) in the 1870's.

Got back to hotel and had curry for tea! The curries are costing about 65-85 pence and a plain naan is 28 pence and rice is 60 pence.The hotel we are in at the moment is costing us £14.15 a night. Good value!

Monday 26th January

Had a lazy day today got up and had our first hot shower, Wonderful, took a walk to Jaipur Junction (the train station) to sort out the tickets for Friday when we travel to Goa.A large Victorian station full of people we gave up and booked through internet, Thank god for the laptop!!

The favourite pastime in Jaipur is flying kites, When you look out over the city there are hundreds in the sky and almost as many in the trees, apparently it is quite an expensive hobby as so many are lost.There are many cottage industries in India and the people sell their wares in the street, like fruit and veg and brooms.

We will be having a few restful days until the train journey on Friday.

Tuesday 27th - Thursday 29th January

Enjoyed our restful few days, in Jaipur.We found a great cafe near the train station called in for a quick coffee and ended up staying a couple of hours. It was fascinating watching the hustle and bustle, great entertainment! Spoke to lots of travellers in the hotel listening to where they had been and what they had seen so far on their travels.

Everyone seems to be using the Lonely planet guide for getting around.The hotel we were stopping in (The Pearl Palace) was a really good find, situated on a residential street, the food was excellent, they only downside was the noise, which seemed to go on all night (Cars , Dogs, and calling to prayer at first light from several temples).

Friday 30th January

Got up very early to get sorted out for the train journey ahead.We had booked our tickets on line.Got to the train station about an hour before the train was due to leave.To our surprise the train pulled into the station not long after. After wandering up and down we finally found the carriage we were travelling in, found our seats and chained our luggage under the seat as advised by many blogs on the Internet. A while later an Indian family came into the carriage and informed us we were sat in their seats.It turned out that we were on the waiting list and our tickets were not confirmed.We are still not sure how this happened.Any way we had to get off the train and wait until the ticket officer came to the carriage and posted a list on the train with names and seat numbers. We found our names and eventually got on the train and found our seats, which turned out to be better seats than the ones we thought we were in to begin with.The journey was an experience, it took 27 hours in total.We travelled two tier air conditioned.This means there are two tiers of beds upper and lower, we were give blankets, sheets and pillows, which we needed as the air con was quite fierce.Every station the train stopped at we were allowed to get off the train, we were in some stations for up to 20 minutes so we could buy food and drinks from the vendors, and stretch our legs and talk to fellow passengers (the best bit). in Our carriage were an Indian couple (who spoke very good English) and a Scots couple, who were biking around India.