Day 14 - Jaipur to Pushkar - Saturday 29th October 2011 After a bit of breakfast on the Pearl's rooftop, we headed to the local bus station to catch our bus to Pushkar. The bus driver very unfriendly and after him abruptly telling us we were in the wrong seats, we moved to our seats to at the back of the bus. The journey was only 3 hours (with a stop in between for a quick chai and paratha at a service station) but it felt like an eternity. Let's put it this w...

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 ...

Day 9 - Kolkata - Monday 24th October 2011 "CHAI, CHAI, CHAI, CHAI, CHAI!" Who drinks Chai at 4am in the morning?!?! The Indians, it seems!! We woke much earlier than we'd hoped; you have to be a really deep sleeper to sleep through the hustle and bustle of the sleeper carriage without stirring! After a much needed cup of chai, we were awake and as alert as the rest of the carriage. To kill time, I read literally the whole of the Kolkata section of th...

Day 7 - Varanasi - Saturday 22nd October 2011 We woke at 6am and after an hour of broken conversation with the Indian men in our carriage, mostly centring the subject of cricket, our train pulled into Varanasi station. My first sight was of a man weeing next to a pile of poo - even for me, it was a little too early in the morning for that! The pickup driver from our hostel was patiently waiting for us (even though we were over an hour late due to train delays) w...

Day 4 - Delhi to Agra - Thursday 20th October 2011 We were up and out early this morning, 4.45am to be precise, to meet our taxi. The taxi ride was about 10 mins to New Delhi station where our train was waiting for us at platform 1. Although this was is only a 2 hour train journey we still got breakfast, warm milk and cornflakes followed by a spicy samosa! The journey was interesting - watching the world go by and the locals having their early morning poo on the...