Day 20 -Jodhpur to Udaipur - Saturday 5th November 2011

Our bus was due to leave at 7.30am so we were up and drinking chai at 6.30am on our rooftop, watching the sun rise over the fort. Nisha, the lady who runs the guest house, packed us on our way with a little packed lunch just in case we got hungry on our bus journey - so sweet! First impressions of the bus were good and we were optimistic about our forthcoming 7 hour journey - how wrong we were! Now, I am a big fan of rollercoasters but being on one for 7 hours isn't my idea of fun - we were literally jumping around all over the place! Someone told us that in India, you either pay 500 rs for lessons followed by a test or give your instructor 1500 rs and he'll write you a licence!! So basically, the majority of drivers in India have never had a driving lesson. This is surprising, especially given the incredible skills of the drivers to avoid cows, potholes, people, other cars, bikes, auto-rickshaws, dogs, trollies - you name it, and it's on the Indian road.

Looking and feeling a little bit sick and covered in dirt, we finally arrived in Udaipur. First stop, the shower in Nukkard guest house - the water coming off of us was actually black, disgusting!!

After a walk round the town and a chai and 3 cakes (of which Adam ate most of, and in a record time of about 30 seconds), we wandered to marvel at the Lake Palace hotel which is famous for being the main setting of the Bond movie, Octop**** It's a stunning view of this Palace across the lake and it's supposed to be even nicer inside - I looked into staying for a night but at £300 as the starting price we thought we better stick to our £6 a night guesthouse!

We found a place for dinner that also had a really comfy rooftop terrace that showed Octop**** on a big projector screen. It was incredible having the whole rooftop to ourselves, eating tandoori chicken and naan whilst watching a classic Bond movie under the stars, which was filmed in the town we were in, so we recognised a few buildings, the lake and obviously the floating palace! What a great night! With our tummy's full and our head full of Bond's sexual innuendoes, we headed to bed.

Day 21 -Udaipur - Sunday 6th November 2011

As Adam would say "Yoga is posh stretching for girls!" So, with this in mind, he was kicked out of bed and on the rooftop at 8am for an hour yoga session with local yoga guru Prakash. He can bend, stretch, put his leg behind his head and crouch down all balanced on his big toe - upon seeing this, Ad promptly decided that he was a show off! Having said that, bearing in mind Adam has never done yoga, he was well away and was the only one in the class to get straight into a headstand! Perhaps I have a budding yoga guru as my husband?!

After breakfast we walked to the City palace complex and bought tickets to go across to Jamandir Island, which is the island just past the floating palace island. Our plan was to get there and chill out with our books till the sunset, however once we got there we soon realised that in order to stay on the Island any longer than an hour, you had to buy food or drink from the onsite restaurant - which charged the equivalent of £5 for a drink! After an hour, we admitted defeat and got back on the boat back over to the mainland.

Come evening, we went to see a traditional Rajasthan dance show and then went back to ours to chill on our rooftop with some dinner, and headed to bed early.

Day 22 -Udaipur -Monday 7th November 2011

After our early morning yoga and breakfast at our place, we decided to wander over to the other side of the lake to the Hanuman Ghat. It is much quieter on this side and you can walk for a while without the constant "rickshaw? Tailor? Dope? Drugs?" questions that get thrown at you on the other side.

We'd decided that we wanted to get an Ayurveda message so thought we'd check out a couple of places and see what the general cost was. On our search we came across Raju, who as well as the usual Ayurveda stuff also offered a therapy message. He grabbed my hand and within about a minute had told me my aliments and what needed to be done - he had me hook, line and sinker! Ad and I agreed that I'd go and see Raju whilst he went and had an Ayurveda massage at another place and then we'd meet back at the middle. Once at Raju's, he took me up to a small room and seemed quite perplexed as to why I had come without Adam. It soon became apparent why, as for the massage I had to be quite literally naked - all to do with the meridian lines of the body I was told! After nearly 4 weeks of covering up my legs and shoulders, it now seemed very odd to have to be naked on front of a strange man; visions of my massage molestation in Marrakech clouded my thoughts! In the end, I just succumbed to the idea and got on with it, although it would be lying to say I didn't have fleeting thoughts of him just being a pervert. I've got to say the massage was pretty amazing - he cracked literally every bone in my body and told me things that I needed to get sorted out. By the end of it, we were like best mates - some of the questions he asked were, let's say, extremely personal - all apparently in the name of trying to work out what was wrong with me.

Cracked and feeling slightly light headed, I walked back to the place Adam was having his massage only to find the cutest, fattest puppy I have ever seen. Ad was another 15 mins so I occupied myself with my new friend; my bag was the same colour as his mum and therefore he seem to think he could suckle my longchamp - quite an interesting sight!

Both massaged up, we headed for a rooftop restaurant in the hotel minerwa, which has lovely cushion seats looking out across the lake, and caught up with our family on Skype over some dinner and chai.

Day 23 -Udaipur - Tuesday 8th November 2011

Soph was up again to do her morning yoga (she loves it or the idea of it anyway?!). I, on the other hand, was all stretched out and seeing as I had a nice hour massage the day before, I thought I would take today easy. With Soph on the roof top balancing on her little toe, I had a shower and headed up to breakfast, obviously taking some pics and the micky out of Soph on my way there! I ordered hot porridge with honey and sliced bananas, it's really nice, and a chai and waited for Soph whilst reading the Indian Times (well looking at the pictures, my Hindi is still pretty poor!!). Soph finally arrived, all chilled and feeling ready for the day. We ate our breakfast and headed into the town, Soph had some henna done at a local artist shop where he took great pride in showing us his invention of a mix between a sitar and guitar - it's got 24 strings?! Anyway Soph had her henna done and I took the pics. With the henna done we went to café mia for coffee for me and chai masala for Soph, we both also had some gulab jamun, which tastes like sticky toffee pudding but is actually deep fried balls of dough socked in rose flavour syrup, tasty hey!! We read our books for an hour and then headed back to the guest house. After a cold shower and chat with the owner, we went posh for the night. We saw earlier that a local haveli hotel had an awesome restaurant right on the lake in front of the palace! So we went there for dinner, albeit fearing it would be really expensive. We had 2 veg mains and 1 non-veg mixed tandoori grill, Soph is still on her detox so I had a large kingfisher and she had a water. The restaurant was amazing and as we were finishing our dinner there was a big, but brief, fireworks display from a boat on the lake, we tried to get some pic but they are a bit blurry! We had some rasgualla (like gulab jamun but actually a milk product reduced down to a solid but with the same rose syrup) for pudding - it's is so tasty!! All that and the meal was about £20. After a perfect night, we walked back to our guest house across the bridge on the lake where (as usual) we got offered weed, ganga, spliffy and my new favourite lovely jubbly opium!! They must think Soph looks like a drug addict. Then slept for a new day….…

Day 24 -Udaipur - Wednesday 9th November 2011

Soph set the alarm this morning for 7.45am so she could be up in time to do her morning yoga, I've tried it twice but much prefer lying in bed in the morning! However this morning it was all too much, after doing it every day prior (I was very impressed) today she just wanted to snooze which suited me just fine! After a bit of a snooze, we were up and ready for check out with was at 10am. We had packed out rucksacks the night before, so we showered and took of stuff to reception, paid our bill which was 3100rs (£40) which was for 4 nights, 4 breakfasts, about a million cups of chai and an evening meal… pretty good value?! Our train was due out of Udaipur City station at 7.30pm so we just chilled all day ready for our 9 hour journey to Ahmedabad then 4 hour wait for a flight to Bangalore. We could have got a 37 hour train straight there but a 9 hour train ride for £2 each in sleeper class and a flight for £80 each seemed a better deal than 37 hours on an Indian train!! So this would be our final night in northern India. We have really enjoyed all the noise, hustle, honks of cars, stray dogs, cows etc. and all that goes with the big cities of the north. So, now we are a month into Indian life and what's better than spending the next 4 weeks chilling on the beaches of the south west coast - Kerala, Goa and the southernmost tip of India, Cape Comorin - Bangalore here we come!!