28 Aug – 29 Aug
Jaipur – Capital of Rajasthan
Loves – Elephant rides, mazy fort
Hates – Arsenal being P1ss poor

I am currently in Varanasi in an internet café which seems to be running on a lawnmower motor – nothing ceases to amaze me here.

We arrived in Jaipur on a small minibus thingy on Friday. Jaipur is a cool looking city and has some interesting things to see, it’s also the capital of Rajasthan – the state/province that I have been traveling around for the last 2 weeks – something pretty much every tuk-tuk and taxi driver seemed pretty proud of and wanted to make sure we knew. Do one you mug, I live in London don’t you know!!

After a pretty poor effort in the last 4-5 days, mostly due to booze I managed to get around most of the ‘must-sees’ in Jaipur. The main part is the Pink City which is so called after the King ordered for all the walls facing a road to be painted Pink – meaning “Welcome.” I would say it’s more of an orange so maybe he was colour-blind or something, but that’s by the by. The Juntar Muntar, which is one of 5 observatories in India, was pretty cool – it had instruments used to study the stars and planets in the past. I couldn’t understand what most of them did but it seemed like a lot of effort had gone into them so thumbs up to the old boy who designed and built it!!

The current King of the City Palace has a nickname which translates to “one-and-a-quarter,” meaning one-and-a-quarter man. He therefore has one and a quarter flags on his palace whenever he is in - a little bit of an ego trip in my opinion but don’t tell him I said so…Saw some pretty cool things in there like Camel mounted guns (I would have liked to have seen them in action!), 3 bladed knives, swords and the largest Silver items in the world – Silver Urns used to carry holy water for the King on a visit to England. Judging by the state of the River I am surprised he didn’t opt for our oh so dirty Thames.

Later we hit a club and then bundled 15 people in the back of a 4x4, which was entertaining! Another party beckoned but we ended up in a random park boozing next to a stable of horses and a terrifying guard dog!! This set me up nicely for a 2hr sleep and an elephant ride up to Jaipur fort - I never knew how big these things were and when he started trumpeting his trunk off I started to sh1t myself a wee bit!!! The fort was cool but I won’t bore you with details – I took loads of pics so you can see – there were basically loads of rooms, upon staircases upon rooms, upon staircases. Oh and bats – a LOT of bats!!

30 Aug – 31 Aug
Agra – Home of the Taj Mahal
Loves – Taj Mahal
Hates – All the little guys trying to sell me 10 mini Taj Mahals for 100 Rupees.
Wish I were…a King – so I could have one of these built in my memory

It has been a long countdown to get here but we finally are – the home of the Taj Mahal. If you come to India and don’t see this then in my opinion you should be shot – it’s fantastic.

You have to pay 750 rupees to get in (about 10 quid) compared to the locals paying 10 rupees (about 15pence). If there was ever a more blatant example of discrimination I would be surprised – it’s a f’ing joke but I took it as a Hindi hook on the chin and walked on by. To be fair to them they do try to make it better by throwing in a bottle of water and a stupid paid of slippers..thanks!! ;-)

Sorry about that…
Upon entry you walk through the huge gate and see the Taj raised on a massive platform, with absolutely nothing but sky behind it. It’s brilliant – and even changes colour from Silver to Pink to Blue to Green when the sunsets – see pics. Indians ask to have your picture taken with you all the time which is entertaining at first but annoying later – a few of us started demanding money in return after a while! One guy said “it is my dream to have a picture with you,” so obviously I couldn’t resist a cheeky vogue pose on his camera!!

In the evening we took an overnight train to Varanasi which is where I am now. It was unbearably hot on the platform where we waited for our train. To top it off I left my phone in the cab – probably payback for calling him a not so nice word because he wouldn’t turn his Air Conditioning on. He came back with it cursing in Hindi until I gave him 100 rupees as a thank you, at which point he magically turned to a fluent Englishman and hugged me like I was his long lost brother!!! Unbelievable!! On the way back a bird decided to let it all out all over my arm, lucky apparently. I’m learning to laugh these things off!!!

I’ll update Varanasi when I get to Calcutta in a couple of days along with pics as this computer doesn’t work, plus I am late for a palm reading session. ;-)

Missing you all…
Will