Hi All,

Well I'm back in New Delhi for what feels like he millionth time and I leave tonight on ANOTHER overnight train to hed back into Nepal. I've a fantastic 2 weeks with pops, who spoiled me rotten, and I've definitely gained more weight, joy joy!! Back to Weightwatchers methinks....

Anyway, after I last wrote we successfully got my Mongolian Visa and headed to Udaipur in Rajhastan. Now we've done lots since then, but it's safe to say we were pretty bored here! Udaipur is known as "Lake City". One of the early Maharajas created lots of lakes, and they were pretty cleverly constructed too, but unfortunately India hadn't had any rain yet...so the lakes were dry. What was called Lake City should've been called "Dry, mucky crap city". But anyway, we chilled in a nice hotel, ate LOTS of great Rajhastani food and drank a few beers!

After Udaipur was my favourite part of the trip which was Jamnagar in Gujurat. This is the area where my Grandfather was born and we still have a lot of fmily there. The journey to Jmnagar was funny, as Gujurat is a "dry" state, that's right, NO ALCOHOL, unless you get a special permit and we didn't. Anyway, the train guards saw my white face, assumed (Incorrectly of course) that I was an alcoholic and searched my bags! Ha ha, they didn't find anything though! Anyway, we stayed in a Jain Dharamshala, similar to a hostel and ate with family for 2 days which was GREAT.

We did a fair bit of visiting and sightseeing. We went to Aradna Gam temple which id known in the area for the Mataji...which is a spirit who passes over the temple, and sometimes enters a member of the congregation. When the mataji enters you, you are no longer yourself, and people come to you for blessings. No one was filled with the spirit when we were there, but there was a woman convulsing in excitement next to me which was a bit disturbing...after that we went to a couple more temples and then to my highlight which was Kathaire, the tiny village where my granfather was born and where we still have some family. I found this totally awesome as I'd never met some of these people and certainly didn't know what my grandfather's childhood home was like! The village was one of 52 "Shah" villages, where the Oshwal Shahs settled many years ago. They are all still lived in and the people farm the land for income. I took loads of pictures as you can imagine, it was really cool to see where I came from!!

Anyway, after that we headed to our last stop, Mumbai. I only had 1 night here and again we stayed with family so there was even MORE good food! We went around Mumbai during the day and got stuck in ridiculous traffic on the way home...I was starting to get stroppy and thankfully we made it back before I jumped out of the car and throttled someone.

The weather during our time in India has been unbearably hot, but there's been some rains since we arrived which coooled things down. The monsoon is very late this year which meant we weren't stuck anywhere because of the weather! Mumbai and Jamnagar have both had some really heavy rain now though, I'vr never been in a monsoon before and actually thought it was pretty cool!!

So that's it, bye bye India! Was sad to leave dad yesterday as we had a great time but I only have 6 weeks left and I'll be home sweet home...Holy Crap!

Anyway, that's all from India, back into Nepal tomorrow and though to China again, looks like the overland adventure has all gone to plan so far! Only the small matter of China to England to worry about now!

Hope you're all well,

Sel

xx