OK I am back again.

From Delhi we drove to Jaipur, it is only 185kms (110 miles), but it took 6 hours!! This just gives you an idea of the road conditions and traffic in this country. There are no real highways here, just roads with no lines which are sometimes 4 lanes wide, sometimes 1 lane wide, sometimes no lanes wide! There are typically people, animals, dirt piles all over the road. The whole way you are ducking in and out of traffic, narrowly missing cars, bikes, animals. it is just so strange.

On the way down the driver always stops at expensive hotels in the hopes that we eat there or buy something. Then we end up at displays where they show us how to make something and then show us around the store fill of $100 plus things. We arrived in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, around 3pm. We just relaxed for a few hours and then left for Chokhi Dhani.

Chokhi Dhani is an ethnic village resort which has all sorts of cultural activities such as traditional dancing, folk music, puppet show, elephant rides, and of course henna. We all got henna designs on our left hands, henna is a type of dye that Indians paint on themselves that stays in your skin for a week or more, usually women paint there whole body when they get married. The village was a lot of fun with tons of things to do. After walking around for a while we had dinner in the traditinal way. That means eating food off of leaf plates and with the hands. They give you all sorts of food and curries and bread. Some things were a little strange, but nothing to weird. The whole night was definitely an experience.

Day 4 in India was spent touring around Jaipur. Just outside the city is Amber Fort which is located on top of a huge hill. It was built around 1000AD. We got to the top of the fort via a Elephant ride which was a lot of fun, it didnt really feel so much like an elephant ride as you sit on a large wooden box on the elephants back and you cant see any of the elephant during the ride. The Palaces in the fort were massive and so lavously decorated. The only bad thing was that now in India it is the quite tourist season so all the hawkers are desperate with you and hound you for ages even when you have no interest in buying the stuff. But this has also worked to our favour as we usually get good prices.

Then we toured the pink city, the nickname for Jaipur as one of the Maharaja's painted the entire old city pink for a prince of Englands visit. Now they keep it all pink always. We visited tons of palaces, and while we were crossing the road to get a good photo of one called the Palace of winds several professional photographers were taking our photos. Later on after the city tour we went shopping on the street and the first store we walked into the guy was reading the local evening paper and guess what there was a photo of us crossing the road and the temple in the background on the front page!!! We couldnt believe it!! The article was about tourists in the rainy season, as there are very few of us around. So I gave the driver some money and sent him to get a few more copies. Throughout the rest of the day people keeped coming up to us and saying that we were in the paper, it was so funny. Our driver said he would frame a copy on the wall of his office.

Oh I forgot to mention that after lunch it started raining so heavily that the road started to flood a little. We drove through it anyway and the driver took a lot of pleasure in splashing people, even ones hanging off the buses and we passed them all at high speed. We stopped and went and looked in a shop and 20 minutes later we came out the main road was about 8 inches under water. It was crazy, some people were trying to drive through it, most of them were flooding their exhaust. A lot of people had just stopped in the middle of the road and were waiting. The whole town just stopped! The funny thing is though 2 hours later the road was back to normal. We got some great photos that I cant wait to post, I promise you in Japan we will get hundreds of photos uploaded!!

That night we went and found our own restaurant. It was awesome, 3 curries, a bunch of naan, some drinks, and it all cost about $4USD. It was a very local persons place as we all soon found out by rushing straight back to the hotel and using the bathroom. Tomo got the most sick and she even vomitted unfortunately. But this is all part of traveling in India, you have to expect to have stomach problems. In fact my stomach has hurt for the past week, I think I am finally starting to get better today.

Day 5 was spent in the car. We were to drive to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Unfortunately the governments of Rajasthan and the UP are in conflict over taxes I think so the main road was blocked as we entered the UP. India has 28 states. By blocked I mean people had thrown large rocks all over the road pulled down trees and roofs of buildings and all sorts of stuff. So we had to leave the hotel extra early. Our driver found a back road that was so dodgee but so interesting to see very small villages. On the way we stopped at Fatehpursikri, a well preserved city of sandstone. But it was a terrible tour basically to just get money out of us. We were all feeling bad and tired and it just made us angry.

Then on to Agra, but they will have to be told another day. Got to go!!