Day 12 - Kolkata to Jaipur - Thursday 27th October 2011

Today we fly back to the other side of India to do the 'Rajasthan Rumble' landing in Jaipur, before a 12 day adventure around the whole state, via Indigo airlines today!!

After our hotel picking us up from Jaipur airport, we arrived at the Pearl Palace and could instantly see why everyone raves about the place. It's our cheapest place so far at 1150rps a night (about £15 a night) and is worth every penny and more! On arrival, you get a little book with everything you need to know about Jaipur and India in general, the rooms are lovely with ac and lovely decoration and the staff are very friendly too. In fact, Jaipur in general seems quite different to the places we've been before - hardly any stray dogs, no cockroaches / rats and very few people sleeping on the street. It seems like the posh part of India!

After unpacking and sending our laundry down (it's cheap as chips here to get it washed!), we headed up to the hotels Peacock rooftop restaurant. We were starving so got straight onto ordering and by the time the food had arrived were ready to eat off our arms - instead we ate our food, tandoori chicken and a Rajasthan Thali with ghobi parantha (cauliflower bread) followed by Chai and Indian desert of patisa. It was delicious!! And the setting was pretty perfect too - Diwali was still going on so fireworks and pretty skylights lit the night sky.

After stuffing ourselves stupid (again!), we headed up to bed, skyped nan and grandad and mum for a catch up and then snoozed off.

Day 13 - Jaipur - Friday 28th October 2011

Woke up and headed back up to the rooftop for some breakie before heading out for today's adventure. Swabre, our auto rickshaw driver for the day (yay, a driver not called Ravi!) took us see the old city nicknamed "the pink city"; the reason for the name is because in 1876 Maharaja Ram Singh had the entire city painted pink, a colour associated with hospitality, to welcome the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and the tradition has been maintained ever since.

We then headed onto City Palace and then onto the Jantar Mantar (an observatory built in 1728) which has sundials, instruments to measure when eclipses will occur and even equipment to measure the star signs - pretty extraordinary stuff given it was constructed so many years ago and Adam and I couldn't make head nor tail of it! Next up was the impressive Amber fort. After an hour or so at the Amber fort, we both were feeling a bit tired and so we headed back to our hotel via the Hawa Mahal and then a textile and jewellery factory.

After yet more food, we headed back into the Old City to the bazaars for some retail therapy. Adam put on his best Indian accent and haggled a guy down from 695rs to 320rs for a pair of leather sandals (Jesus creepers to you guys), I was very impressed!! Must be the car salesman in him. Next up was my turn - I only managed a mere 75rs off the original price for my sari scarf but then redeemed myself by haggling to 50% reduction on an ankle bracelet with bells! I now jangle every time I move! Shopped out and running low on rs, we headed back for chai and biscuits on the rooftop.