Thanks for sticking with us - appreciating the comments and love.. We are glad to bring you Blog # 3

J-aipur is G-eeping

Arriving in Jaipur after 18 hours sharing a carriage with a belching man we had considerably more time to get off the train than in Mumbai. We arrived in style: backpacks fully strapped, fanny packs well hidden and Eli's sleeping pack tightly rolled and securely fastened. We are so freaking fly you could call us 'Backpackers Angels'! Whilst hiking up mount everest (the station stairs) an extremely persistant chap explained he could get us to our hotel despite 'all the roads shut', we weren't sure if he owned a tuk tuk or a rocket?! We decided to stick with the ten year old tuk tuk driver our hotel had sent and can proudly say we arrived at the correct place first time - wohaaayyy!!

In Jaipur, we unintentionally found ourselves in the middle of Holi Festival (some wacko indian paint/colour fest). People had travelled the galaxy to be in Jaipur for this day, we just rocked up and pretended we knew what was going on. We found ourselves at the elephant festival - a mismatch of ridiculously extravagently dressed elephants, dancing ladyboys whom Eli kept her distance from after recently developing a fear (one hit her round the head from behind for no apparent reason at a train station?!) and frothy mouthed camels (at least a hundred of each storming round a field). Lets not forget the man with the worlds longest plaited facial hair! At this festival, we romantically rode an elephant together and were covered in colourful paint by fun locals before finding ourselves on the national news. Cameras and microphones forced into the white girls faces whilst we were questioned on a festival we didnt understand, or know existed until that day.. 'Yeah man its great. Free Tibet!' seemed appropiate. The next day our hotel threw a rooftop Holi party with lots of paint, beer, hoses, the occasional grope and backpackers from near and far. We finished the evening with a Thalia with our new backpacking friends (which neither of us will ever be ordering again as for the following 24 hours we experienced why many avoid eating meat in india - apparently we don't know best and they aren't 'over-reacting'). Friday was our final day in Jaipur and we realised we hadn't yet seen any of the city. Luckily you can tour it in a day, unluckily we both felt horrid! Powering through, we jumped in a tuk tuk and took lots of pictures for us to appreciate when we felt better. If we remember correctly the Pink Palace and Amber Fort were beautiful.. We can't forget on the other hand, Eli dropping her GIGANTIC poppadom when trying to break off a taster piece for a canadian bearded stranger, he then kindly bought her another to make up for it which she instantly dropped again right in front of him leading to an uncomfortable pause (who was going to buy the next?) Eli took the hint and trotted of to buy a third alone. Later we collapsed onto our night train, having worked hard at the station, avoiding looking (and smelling) the delights of human faeces on the train tracks. India is truly scrumptious - particularly when your feeling a little rough!!

Waking up in our new hotel room in Delhi we felt back to our chirpy (now vegetarian) selves, we were ready to explore the capital city. Bravely exploring our new surroundings, we found ourselves accidently in the middle of a (very unwhite) slum! Ironically enough we were killing time before leaving for a slum tour run by a local charity. This was absolutely fascinating and we learnt lots, we even found ourselves trying out the islamic non-alcoholic perfume alternative.. tastayyy. For dinner we wondered up to our 'Roof Terrace Restaurant' which actually turned out to be a plastic table on a deserted roof with some nice pot plants, this also seemed to double up as a home for the hotel staff/family of dwarfs! We did however have the yummiest noodles EVER!!! Sunday morning began by us transporting our home made washing line through a few hotel corridors (without taking any of the sopping wet items off) as we had to move rooms, much to the hotel staffs amusement - they certainly weren't expecting that to come out the room with us. Washing line fastly secured in room 10 of our trip we head out to visit Ghandis place of death - we even took off our shoes to walk around his garden. Religious studies did not do this bloke justice! Since being in India, we've had a tough battle between our passion for the events in Ghandi's life and the desire to free tibet. We are currently deciding between a Ghandi or Tibet themed tattoo as we are totally stoked on both. Feel free to place your vote in the comment section. Following this, we wondered to India Gate, a huge park, to reflect of what we had learnt and discuss how inspired we were. We spent the afternoon watching the cricket games, eating ice creams and making beggar children cry. A fight almost broke out between Eli and the dyslexic street child seller, who continuosly threw his mispelt 'India' bracelet at her and demanded money - it was almost as if he was 7.. Luckily sexy french pal saved the day and broke up the fight when things got nasty. Sitting in the park was lovely and was like sitting on a film set, think Slumdog meets Notting Hill meets Oliver Twist meets Bend it Like Flintoff. Travelling back by Delhi metro was like being in futuristic london believe it or not. During the evening we couldn't face more curry so sweet talked the hotel into ordering us Domino's takeaway in Hindi after being continuously hung up on due to the language barrier (something we're now so totally used to..). Mushroom pizza and chocolate pudding was like heaven on a plate/cardboard pizza box. Lying on our bed we declared we were offically living the dream, looking around we burst into fits of giggles realising we had newspaper windows, an unflushable toilet and a homemade washing line - oh how our priorities have changed!!!!

Being in Delhi it only seemed appropiate to visit Delhi's own version of the Taj Mahal... The National Zoo! Ignoring the hordes of touts telling us stupid, filthy, malicious, innappropiate lies about the zoo being closed we rocked up braving semi brave shoulders (yes we are aware of some religious thang here that means shoulders should be covered but we like to live life on the edge! Total devils!) We were ready to spot some 'gators and bears - after a few toilet trips. Much to our suprise (nawwtt) the zoo was in fact open, many of the enclosures were somewhat broken and more worryingly a few too many empty. The search for the giraffe in Delhi is still on; apparently nobody saw us riding it home. We felt like queens riding Humphrey down the highway 'Go Humphrey GO! Run like the wind!!!' (dont worry Mel - Meg didn't touch the giraffe, we attached reigns using the remains of a cage and she rode behind waterski style.. it was ace.) As our television, like the: fan, light, plugs, toilet, window and all taps in our Delhi home sweet home was broken, we spent the evening playing 'animals at the zoo charades'. Just us two. Alone. Like every other day. JOKESSS we've made at least 8 real life human friends, mostly minimal language barriers (make that ten if Humphrey and Timothy are included but not Colin as our friendship died along with him, may he rest in peace!) All jokes aside the zoo was totally geeping and we particularly liked the sloth black bears. Our time in Delhi was nearly up and temple free thank the lord (mwahaha how ironic!) We even squeezed in a trip to an underground bazaar in central parkafter dodging two 'friends' (stalkers). In the bazaar we attracted the average level of attention and were encouraged into every shop including mens shirts and y-front 'playboy' pants but the highlight was definitely being dressed up in sari's. A close second was when meg hit up a song request in the UV lit store and was taught Panjabi dance by locals to her new fave indian track whilst a considerably sized audience built up around her. We then chilled in the park and successfully turned away 6 different ear cleaning companies (men in hilarious hats holding cotton buds and books with reviews and pictures.. ew gross..) We then grabbed some street food before catching the metro home just in the nick of time for Eli to throw up that street food. Awkward! Street Food - 1 Eli - 0 This was soooo unslouky, some would say KABADDAAA.

We have just about nailed the art of sitting in a tiny Tuk Tuk with rucksacks on backs and day bags on legs - think female ninja turtles. Exiting the Tuk Tuk however is quite the opposite.. an art we're yet to nail. Wednesday meant bravely getting a local bus to Agra (TAJEEEEYY BABESSSS!!) Rolling out our Tuk Tuk we ran/hobbled to our departing bus which was probably built by cavemen. We caught it in just enough time to bash on the window and jump on hoping we had the right bus. As we write this we are sat on the roadside in Pakistan feeling something may have gone wrong.. JOKES the Taj is looking super fly and ting. We clambered onto our bus acting like real Delhi locals and settled snuggly into the front row which would have been so freaking roomy if the ginormous tractor tyre wasn't sandwhiching us to the metal seats. Did we mention this bus was 6 hours long? Who knew the Taj was so far from Delhi because we certainly didnt when we planned this????? However, we are so super psyched about repeating the journey after one sweet day in Agra. The bus was cheaper than one from yateley to camberley, so we're sure you can imagine the kind of style we were travelling in. We attempted to provide in-bus entertainment in the form of a group singalong but apparently the hindi folk aren't as familiar with 'wheels on the bus' as team GB. Waking up on Taj day we eagerly hopped out of bed at 5:45am (yes parents, we genuinely made it to the Taj for sunrise!) but no little blogmonsters, we wouldn't particularly recommend it and would advise the lie in as unlike everyone makes out a building is a building whatever the time of day?! The Taj was beautiful and was great to see. BUT we totally had more fun taking pictures of tourists looking like teapots pretending to hold the tip of the Taj for photos (but not at the angle we secretly snapped them from.. MWAHAHAHAHAHAA) We also enjoyed watching the bored witless tourists struggling to understand their tourguides and being forced to study the tiling on the pavement. The Fort looked absolutely PHENOMONAL (from the rickshaw we drove past it in) having made a team vote to spend the would be entrance fee on new clothes. A fort is a fort wherever you are, we've seen plenty already and each one is full of people pretending they're interested in the brickwork but are in fact just there out of peer pressure. Like seriously, who is actually that interested in a hand made pile of bricks? The whole Taj thing is groovy and if you ever happen to be in Agra its really worth popping in, primarily as there is little else to do in Agra. We made up some pretty elaborate stories about the Taj's history (having opted out of a tour) so let us know if your visiting, we're happy to educate you. On Humphrey's former home. Built by Noah. Prior to building the arc. After all that inspirational Tajing we grabbed some breakfast, hit the stalls, got ourselves some new threads, got a lifesize inflatable Taj (jokes.. so impractical, just got a mini one), got taking to a 'bazaar' which turned out to be a slum, drove away from the 'bazaar' which turned out to be a slum, drank an incredibly scrumptious costa coffee, argued with a rickshaw man, refused to pay a rickshaw man, got chased by a rickshaw man, escaped a rickshaw man by hiding from a rickshaw man and by 1pm declared Agra as officially pretty dull.

We close this blog with a video we made during all our free time in Agra and some more stats for you.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=369153676439558&set=vb.100000347857933&type=2&theater

Number of times Meg has washed her hair during our entire trip so far - 4

Number of gifts offered (and rejected) by middle aged Indians for our hand in friendship - 4

Number of Taj Mahals visited - 1

Number of Agra Forts visited - 0

Number of fully working bathroom facilities used - 3

Number of hours spent trying to understand Hindi - 6876421987412984127941287412984721

Number of bike rickshaw lifts sold to us as a 'trip on an indian helicopter' - 2

Number of McDonalds - 3

Number of Dominos - 1

Number of Subways - 1

Number of Costa's - 1

Number of Indian meals - TOO MANY FOR OUR TUMMIES

Number of sunglasses bought thinking they were fake armani when they were actually fake star wars - 1

Number of songs composed - 1

Hope the word to Free Tibet is reaching home (and Tibet)!!!

We miss you all loads/occasionally/sometimes/rarely/we simply say it to make you feel better!

Jokes. But still having heaps of fun!!!!!!!!!!!!

Peace and love,

MELI XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX