This is a beautiful city set on Lake Pichola with several islands, two of them being particularly impressive. I keep bumping into Dave on my travels, a civil engineer from the Midlands, so we did a few of the activities here together - the stroll around the enormous city palace, an excellent evening of Rajashtani folk dancing and music, a visit to the vintage car museum where the last maharaja's old cars are stored, and a boat trip to Jagmandir Island which pretty much consists of a walled restaurant and gardens. The lake is definitely the best place from where to see this picturesque place. We are lucky to see it full of water, as it is often empty.

The other large island, Jag Niwas Island is completely covered by a palace built in 1754 and later converted into the very exclusive Lake Palace Hotel. This, along with the hilltop Monsoon Palace 8km away, and the city in general were used for the filming of "O c t o p u s s y" in 1983. The city definitely has the feel of a James Bond setting, and they won't let you forget it either. The film is shown every night in most of the hotels and guesthouses. I watched some of it the other night - wish I could find the auto-rickshaw driver that can do wheelies!

I also attended a cookery course in the kitchen of Shashi. In five hours she managed to show us how to cook pretty much every Rajasthani dish that you could find on the menu, including all the different breads. The food was excellent, and she has an amazing story too. Her husband died at 32 leaving her with two young sons to bring up alone. She struggled for many years washing clothes for a living, but had to do it under cover as she is of the Brahmin caste, the highest "priest and scholar" caste and is not allowed to do menial jobs like cleaning and washing. She is also not allowed to re-marry. One day, two Irish travellers came to stay in her makeshift guest house, and because she was such a cook they convinced her through her sons to start doing cookery lessons. She originally spoke only Rajashani, not even Hindi. So she learnt English whilst her students learned to cook, and less than 3 years later she is a roaring success.

Quite by accident I managed to be staying the hotel with the biggest party in town on New Year's Eve, but with the loud dance music blaring from the rooftop restaurant that attracted a very young crowd, it wasn't really my scene. I spent the last hour there watching the fireworks over the city. Before that I had found a group of locals across the road who had a fire going and some better music (in my opinion) so I spent a couple of hours with them. It did seem a bit strange to be celebrating midnight 5½ hours ahead of the UK. But it's a big time zone - you can't argue with a sixth of the world's population. My favourite moment was when a Sikh carrying a shotgun went up onto the roof and unloaded it into the sky with the fireworks. Everyone had been steering clear of him until that point.

I've been relieved that I chose to keep relatively still over the holiday period, and have been here for nearly a week now. Transport horror stories have been pouring out of other travellers. It isn't even possible to go back the way I came because the strikers have been removing the clips from the railway sleepers on certain lines!