You meet the most interesting people and see the strangest things on Indian trains. Grannies squatting next to the tracks, saris hiked right up and a little brown turtle head poking out; kids playing in dirty water in their birthday suits and having the time of their lives; and that's just stuff you see out the window. Inside it can be a real circus at times, with a constant procession of sellers, hawkers, and beggars, trying to sell everything from toy guns to curry puffs wrapped in old newspaper; and of course the chai wallahs with their robotic "chai, chai, chaiiii". And then there's all the curious locals who want to practice with English with a foreigner. ("What is you place of residence?"/"Why aren't you married?"/"You play cricket?"/"You give me internet ID.")

On the last train I took, I turned around after being tapped on the shoulder to see what appeared to be a man in a sari, decked out in bangles, beads and mascara. I thought s/he wanted my seat, then I remembered what some other travellers told me about transvestite gypsies on trains. They go from car to car, placing gypsy curses on anyone they can get their hands on, and won't remove the curse unless a couple of rupees are handed over. Voodoo blackmail, if you will. There is a name for this shunned genderless caste, made up of eunuchs, homosexuals, hermaphrodites, and those stray children unfortunate enough to have been captured by gypsies and had their balls cut off. I s*** you not. They're known as the hijra, somewhat of a third gender in this country. They show up as uninvited guests to weddings, bless (or curse) newly borns (for a fee, of course), tell fortunes, or sell themselves to those with sexual appetites a little left of field from the norm. I wasn't buying it, and (as nicely as I could, as not to attract some kind of gypsy wrath) tried make them go away. If I die a sudden and horrible death or contract spontaneous herpies, you'll know why.

After my last post I had the craziest auto-rickshaw ride of my life, getting to the station to catch my train to Delhi. I was crammed in with a dozen Indians (I chose to take a "shared" auto, thinking I'd save a dollar or two), perched on a sack on flour in the back and holding on for dear life as we sped over some atrocious country roads, kicking up clouds of dust and overtaking buses, tractors, and cows at breakneck speed. Now I'm generally okay with crazy Indian tuk-tuk drivers, it's pretty much the norm here anyway, driving on the wrong side of the road to overtake, or driving on the wrong side of the road just for the hell of it, whatever. What made this ride so particularly terrifying was the fact that the driver couldn't have been more than ten years old, with his little buddy next to him, egging him on. Where I come from, ten year olds ride scooters, at the most little peewees on their daddy's farm, and they certainly aren't put at the controls of a rickety rickshaw with the lives of a dozen people in their hands. Madness, I say.

Delhi was just another big crowded chaotic dirty dusty city, and I had my phone stolen right out of my shoulder bag as I walked down the street without feeling a thing. There's just that many people that you don't notice. A half-hour walk down a street in Old Delhi is a draining experience. Sensory overload. Every step is flooding your brain with information. Watch for that pothole there, don't step in the cow-s*** here, make way for the tuk-tuk blaring it's horn in my ear two feet behind me, don't get impaled by that bull, don't get run down by that speeding truck, dodge that sadhu, smell that spice, don't smell that open drain, do I want another chai?, and on, and on, and on it goes.

And now I'm in the deserts of Rajasthan, the Land of Kings, with all its colourful cities. First was Jaisalmer, the Golden City, with its majestic sandcastle fort as centrepiece. Jaisalmer is right out there in the desert, not too far from the Pakistan border. We took a jeep out to the desert, which left us in the middle of nowhere scratching our heads beside the road. Then out of nowhere our guide with camels in tow appeared over a sandy ridge like a mirage, and before we knew it we were being bounced around on the back of a camel out in the desert scrub. Camels are much bigger than you'd think. Being on the back of one feels like sitting on a giraffe. And they fart. Lots. Even worse is this disgusting way of burping they have. This bulbous sack-like thing, like a tongue turned inside out, flops out the side of their mouth, and they give an almighty belch that would rival a family of fat bogans burping in unison after a hearty meal of baked beans and beer, and then they suck their tongue-sack back down their throat, the same way you'd swallow a raw squid. Camels are strange animals.

The desert was fun, riding over the dunes on the back of a camel, decked out in baggy camel pants and a makeshift turban with Ray Bans. Only in India could you get away with that. You wouldn't want to be on a camel for more than a couple of days at most. I still got a sore ass a week on. But it was worth it. Our guides chased down goats to get milk for our chai. And I'll be damned if they weren't the best chais I ever had. Probably had something to do with the handfuls of sugar dumped in. Every meal was made on a little fire we would scrounge around to collect little sticks for in the scrub. They'd prepare the meal right there on the sand, and miraculously without getting any sand in it. And I gotta hand it to our desert guides, they were probably some of the best Indian meals I've had. A chapati party in the dunes. The desert night sky is just like they say it is: amazing. I counted five shooting stars in little more than an hour, and that's just while I happened to be looking up. Although they could have just been Pakistani missile tests just over the border.

After the camel safari and another teeth-shattering bus ride (which could only be described as a six-hour ordeal inside an earthquake on wheels) was Jodhpur. In fact buses are so bad in this country that NASA should incorporate them into their astronaut training programme, right next door to the G-force chamber. All the elements are there: deafening noise (trumpeting horns, the kind you'd expect from an elephant's birthday party), flashing lights, uncomfortable seating (squashed in between a fat mustached Indian businessman on his phone and a weedy old man in an oversized turban), and extreme turbulence so bad you can barely keep a hold of your hair follicles, let alone anything in your hand (even the potholes have potholes here, and those potholes have baby potholes of their own).

Jodhpur itself was great. It's known as the Blue City, because the houses in the Old Town are all painted blue. Go figure. Looming over the city on a rocky outcrop is the mighty Merhangarh Fort, right out of some epic movie. And it's just as impressive inside as out. Our guest house had a rooftop terrace right under the shadow of the fort. It's so steep and so big that I still can't get my head around how it could possibly have been constructed in a time without industrial cranes and helicopters.

And now here I am in Udaipur, the jewel of Rajasthan. Udaipur, known as the White City, because all the buildings here are (you guessed it) white, is like something out of a James Bond movie. Because it actually is. Large chunks of Octop**** were filmed here, and Octop**** s floating Lake Palace is a pleasant view from the roof of my hotel. Udaipur is nice, even by Western standards (a rare thing indeed from the places I've been to so far). It doesn't even feel like India, more like some lakeside European city. I feel like I'm in Italy or something. There's an old castle, two, actually, on the hills overlooking the lake, and in the lake itself are a number of small islands with little palaces of their own. The Lake Palace covers the island it is on so completely that it gives the impression that it really is floating on the lake. Now it's an ultra-luxurious hotel, and unfortunately not the exclusive domain of a bikini babe cult of jewellery smugglers like it is in the movie. Still, it doesn't hurt to dream.