2 days until my birthday!!

On the 19th we had the day to look around Udaipur, we had no tour guide but it only a small city so there was no problem in us finding sights. First of all we went to the city palace. We payed for a tour guide to take us around and he gave us some really interesting pieces of information, the palace wasn't as pretty or as impressive as some of the others we have seen but worth doing nonetheless. Jess and I then had a mooch around the city and did a little but more shopping. I brought myself a scrapbook which i can fill with everything from India when i get home. We then went on a boat trip across the lake which provided us with some really good photo oppertunities, we ended up on Jagmandir, a small island in the middle of the lake, there were a few resturants on it but all of them were very posh and expensive so we settled for some more shisha and enjoyed the views of the lake and the piece and quite of the island.
We then headed back to the hotel to change before heading back out to watch traditional rajasthan dance. It was really amazing to watch and they all had beautifal costumes on. There was one dance where they balanced pots with fire in on their heads and did some amazing dancing. The most impressive one though was the last one, a lady was balancing pots on her head whilst doing various tricks such as walking on broken glass and balancing on a bowl. By the end of her dance she had 9 pots on her head!

On the 20th we had another long journey to Pushkar. It ended up being 8 hours (due to our tyre bursting - probably something to do with the speed our driver insitsts on going over speed bumps!) but it didn't seem that bad. It gave us a chance to practice our card skills and for me to invent a new game, counting how many times our driver beeps (409 times in 1 hour 30 mins, if you are interested). Once in Pushkar we checked in, had something to eat, then went to bed. Our hotel has a SWIMMING POOL but i couldn't go in when we arrived because there was a thunder storm (who would have thought!!).

This morning we had a tour around Pushkar. We went to the main temple for the god Rama and then went to the holy lake. We also had a look around a few more temples. By this point it was coming up to midday so it was too hot to be in the town so we went back to our hotel to have a swim!! Later on this afternoon we are going to go to the market to do a bit more retail therapy, pushkar is renouned for its jewelery so how can we resist?!

The weather seems to be getting a lot hotter as we are working our way south, i would say it is around 34 degrees, so it is hot but bearable. I'm still enjoying the food and i have found a few favourite dishes. Saying that there is always continental and chinese food on the menu so we are usually spoilt for choice.

I better be going, shopping needs to be done!!
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