Puppets and Kings

....Photos to come on this blog entry....connection a bit lame!!!


Well, the last time we spoke Jen was on her way to stardom in Bollywood and I'd been persuaded to wear friggin speedo's, lol. We're now in the North of India after being with our tour group for a few days. The state is Rajasthan and its hot and beautiful up here. In fact it kind of reminds us of Africa a little with its arid landscape. I think this familiarity will only increase as we head even further north and into the desert! Our tour leader told us that we needed to be prepared for about 40 degrees temperature!!! What the hell.....I think I'll spontaneously combust or pass out as soon as it hits me (if you didn't know already, im not one for the heat....im getting better though as Jen is encouraging me more...in fact, scratch that, Jen has gone off sunbathing altogether as 1 in 2 Ozzies get some kind of skin cancer....woh...scary stuff).

So as aforementioned we're now with a tour group of 2 others. This is very small in comparison to the tour in Africa as we were expecting up to 16 people. To be honest though its probably good practice for our individual tour in China. The main issue we have here however is that we're so used to travelling by ourselves that we don't in fact need a tour leader, lol! The guy is brilliant with information and background though, so we're trying not to dwell too much!

The one thing that I will continue to dwell on, im sure, is the fact that he tips people randomly and excessively! Our pre-departure information requested 100 rupees per person, per day for a 'tip kitty'....for the tour leader to tip guides and others. From a UK perspective this seemed quite reasonable (about 1pound 25)...but the dude is tipping everyone! He even tipped a lady, whom we'd already paid, to look after our shoes whilst outside a temple. And he gave her 20 rupees (50 cents)...slightly excessive as the going rate is 1 rupee!!!

Nevertheless, we envisaged this and in fact kindly declined to contribute to the tipping pot as we have experience of tipping people in India (waiters and guides etc). So we are managing our own tipping...and managing it much more realistically for two 'travellers' as opposed to 'holiday-ers'...if that makes sense.

We also need to eat separately from the other two generally as our guide is quite middle classed and so takes them to very expensive restaurants. For example, he'll take them for a Thali at a cost of 300 rupees. 300 RUPEES! We're used to paying 20 rupees for the same sort of thing! Wow thats expensive. So we obviously also declined this and went next door for a lush meal at a cost of 200 rupees for the both of us (5 dollars). And it was the best meal we'd had in India to date!

24/03/08 - After a very comfortable train journey from Mumbai Central involving reclining seats and some enthusiastic Indian kids singing Backstreet Boys, we arrived in Ahmedabad in Gujurat. A visit to by far the busiest market scene we've seen, and then a world famous Mosque could only be topped off with a visit to an Ashram (place of worship and learning) where none other than Gandhi lived for 13 years. Wow this was an inspiring place.Lots of stories and background and sadness surrounding this mans life. He truly is one of the most inspirational people alive. Oh yeah, and he was on the executive committee for the London Vegetarian Society...get in there Gandhi!!

25/03/08 - The next morning and we were on a 'local' bus to Udaipur. And by local, it totally doesn't mean truly-local on this tour! In a way its a shame for the two newbies to India that they may not get to experience a really local bus journey with 10,000 people on one bus, smelling and chatting and pushing. This 'local' bus (as our tour leader described it) was in fact a flippin comfortable-seat-allocated-clean private bus that would certainly have cost more than some of the rickety old things we've been on for long journeys. Not complaining though as it was a time for us to get some sleep. And there was a seriously cute little girl sitting in front who seemed fascinated by Jen. This journey provided us with some different scenery as it started to turn more desert-like...

Upon arrival at Udaipur, we all fell in love instantly. Its beautiful here. A mixture of small narrow streets all around a central, huge, city palace and surrounded by a lake. With a combination of guesthouses and 7 star hotels, we weren't sure what to expect!

Worrying aside, we were put up in a seriously nice room! We're a bit worried at the moment that we've booked some kind of fancy tour due to the food and accommodation choices so far, but we're not complaining about having hot water and a swimming pool...its a rarity and its brilliant! I never thought that having a hot shower would be so amazing.

Our guide gave us a quick tour around the city and then we went to a local dance show. Boy were we in for a treat! It was brilliant and involved some majorly talented musicians playing along to ladies in Indian dress and topped off by a lady carrying 8 metal bowls on her head whilst dancing..sounds random I know! There was also a pretty impressive puppet show to the local music which prompted Jen to buy a replica puppet for 100 rupees (1 pound 25) at the end!

Another decline by Jen and I to eat at the very upmarket place involved us eating at the Lotus Cafe...which was lush. We also made a mental note to persuade our group to come with us and slum it one night!


26/03/08 - Morning came around for us too quickly as the bed was lush! 4 slices of marmite on toast later (our own marmite) for a cost of 25 rupees (just over 50 cents) and a tour of the palace today was in order. Really enjoyable would be the best way to describe it, and for the first time on the whole of our trip we had a guide whom gave us lots of history about the architecture and the civilisation back then. PLUS...the guy gave us palm readings.....

I'm not one to boast about good things...but my palm reading was pretty damn good. Now I dont want to jinx anything and so I wont go on about it too much, BUT...he could see I was either a king or a prime minister in a previous life (lol). I was also an extremely lucky and intelligent person whom would have 1 son and 2 daughters....in summary he said there was nothing to worry about as I had small ears and a high forehead....apparently this is good!!!

Jen, on the other hand...had a mixed bag of information fed to her. She also, coincidently, will have 1 son and 2 daughters....but she may have another love in her life. We may be able to prevent this if she 'talks more openly' as he described it and buys a pearl necklace. She was also told that she will have 'stomach problems', a miscarriage and that she needs to meditate....BLIMEY OH RILEY! Thats a lot of info for the two of us, lol. The guy was awesome though, he was quite accurate with some stuff...or we were all sucked in. All I can say is that we didn't pay him anything for a palm reading as he was already our guide and we just got talking about palm readers....spooky or not? We'll see wont we.

After our tour, and after looking in 20 shops, we purchased 5 beautiful photo albums at a cost of 250 rupees each (about 6 pounds) for all of our piccies. They're made out of Camel Leather but the guy promised us the animals died of completely natural causes before we purchased. I even have his business card so there'll be trouble if I find out otherwise....not that im likely to be able to do that of course, lol.

Tomorrow we travel to Jaipur (we think). I hope it'll be as gorgeous as Udaipur...im sure it will be.