There is an Tourist Information Office in the park and, we have been told, a craft centre. There is no sign of the latter and the former is closed. As we make to leave, a man engages us in conversation. It is the usual gambit, where are you going, where do you come from. Of course, we make the mistake of mentioning the craft centre and we are all set for a long explanation of how to get there and no doubt and offer to show us the way when the attendant from the Tourist Information Office abruptly interupts and proceeds to bombard us with information about the old city around the Catholic Cathedral and the craft centre behind it – none of which is mentioned in Lonely Planet – and that we must be sure to take a metered government-acredited tuk tuk to tour the area. Eventually we are able to extricate ourselves, somewhat sceptical about the metered tuk tuks but intrigued by the ‘old’ town around the cathedral.

The Cathedral is an imposing grey and white building which dominates the skyline north of the Galle Road and as we head towards it, the man from the park catches up with us and insists on showing us the way to the craft centre. It’s apparently on his way home; a likely tale and is sure to mean that he stands to make a commission on anything we buy. By now we know that the craft centre is likely to be a tourist shop aimed at tour groups, but it makes for an interesting walk through the quiet lanes off the main road, passed the wonderful heritage buildings of St Aloysius College. It never ceases to amaze how quickly the hurly burly of the main shopping districts can be left behind for the calm, leafy and traffic-free neighbourhoods, as quiet as any inside the fort.

The craft centre is exactly as we expect and after a quick look round we extricate ourselves from the usual sales patter and heavy-handed sales technique and retrace our steps to look round the very simple cathedral. Its unglazed windows with mahogany shutters giving it quite an airy feel far removed from the dark and sombre ambience normally associated with such places. Just outside, the boys from the nearby college are playing a game of street cricket, their all-white uniforms being particularly appropriate, and we stop a while to watch, before making our way back to the fort.

We have found a rather nice little cafe called Punto Cafe in Pedlar Street. It only has three tables and is open to the street – although the aspect is not particularly preposessing as it faces the rather drab exterior of a local school against which the lady next door hangs her washing, of which she has so much, we speculate that she must be running a laundry – and the food is good. So we have taken to having breakfast here since the breakfast at Mrs Wijenayake’s is dire, as well as our evening meal. But each time we eat here Nakeeb, the owner, invariably disappears on his motorbike to obtain some essential supplies.

We vist the white Dutch Reform Church built between 1792 and 1795 where we are greeted by the caretaker who is eager to show us round and point out the interesting gravestones from the old Dutch cemetry which pave the floor.

Just a little further down the street is the Anglican church which could have been lifted directly from an English village and deposited here.

Once again we bump into the Kiwis, Joanna and Amelia, who arrived here today having spent three days in Unawatuna. They are no longer travelling with the Israeli who, it seems, had become a little tiresome.

We are staying at Mrs Wijenayake’s Guest House at 65 Lighthouse Street, just a few paces from the fort walls and the sea beyond. The house she has here is enormous taking up a large plot on the corner of New Lane (which is in the throes of being paved with bricks). It is a mere stone’s throw from the mosque which is sure to provide an early wake up call in the morning. The house itself is a maze or corridors and our room is on the first floor off a narrow shared balcony. Adequate and moderately clean for 1500 rupees.

We have lunch at India Hut – their logo is strikingly similar to another, much better-known ‘Hut’ – on the first floor balcony of a lovely historic building overlooking the fort walls. The place is empty, although not for long, and we are soon in the midst of a raucous family of Sri Lankans, who fill all the tables and spill over onto ours! I feel rather sorry for the lone child draws the short straw and has share a table with two English strangers.

Today we need to top up on cash, which involves a trip into Matara about 15 minutes away on the bus. With a population of around 76,000 this is a bustling coastal town with not much to recommend it to tourists. It’s hot and the traffic heavy with people coming into town to visit the temples and generally enjoy themselves on this second day of Poya. The streets are a riot of colour thanks to the flags and banners everywhere.

This is a place to sit in the shade on the seafront and spend a while people-watching. It’s too hot for anything more strenuous. But there is an endless stream of people moving back and forth across the slightly incongruous suspension bridge which leads to a buddhist temple on the small island of Parey Dewa whilst at other temples people wait patiently sheltering from the sun under umbrellas as they wait patiently to enter.

There is a road widening project underway which involves the partial demolition of all the buildings that line both sides of the main road into the centre of town as well as the moving of the drainage channels. It’s a shambolic affair with rubble lying everywhere and shells of forlorn buildings waiting to have their facias re-instated. Incredibly, all this is open to the street.

It’s not uncommon in Sri Lanka to come across gun-toting soldiers strolling in the streets and it’s quite disconcerting when the board the bus, as they did on one occasion and take their seats for all the world like any normal passenger. Army manoevres also take place in full public view and road barackades as part of these exercises are not unusual though no-one get stopped so what purpose they serve is unclear. In high profile sites such as Colombo and Kandy there are police posts every few hundred yards, manned by jovial and friendly police who seem to have little to do but idly pass the time of day.

The Kiwis, Joanna and Amelia, who we first met on the train to Ella, turn up at Palm Villas with an Israeli travelling companion and after some negotiations take a room at the back.

There is a small island and linked by a short sand causeway just where the two bays meet and today’s little diversion is to climb the rickety stairs to the top for the view of the bays and the surf as it sprays up over the rocks below. On the far side is a small thatch-covered platform which in high season functions as a bar, but today is deserted apart from a few crates of empty bottles and has rather melancholy air.

The traditional fishing posts stand lonely in the shallows waiting for the start of the fishing season in June. Unfortunately, we will miss witnessing local fishermen perched precariously on these poles which appear to be far too flimsy to withstand the power of the sea never mind the weight of the fishermen. Ah well, we shall have to content ourselves with the picture on the front of our Lonely Planet guide book!

Apart from the buses there is generally little traffic on the roads here; comprising mainly tuk tuks, motor bikes, cycles and lorries, and not many cars.

Marissa is a small village straddling the Galle Road, although most of the action, what there is of it, is on the beach. Here are a few thatched beach bars-cum-restaurants and guest houses offering cabanas and rooms, not all of them open at this time of year, and one rather more up-market hotel with a swimming pool. Almost all the buildings are set back behind the tree line. The only encroachment onto this lovely, unspoilt crescent of sand and sea is the occasional thatched beach bar. This is has to be the prettiest beach so far.

We are staying at Palm Villas which lies on a bay of it’s own, and turns out to be a very good choice. The guest house gardens are right on the sea, although at this time of year the tide is too high for there to be any beach and if it wasn’t for a retaining wall, the garden would be fast disappearing into the sea. As it is, there is only a narrow path still remaining to link us with the main beach a few yards away. We have a room with a sea view, well just; at least there is a glimpse of the sea from the bed, which is more than we have got anywhere else. And, it is the cleanest room so far, by a long way. Of course, the obligatory building work is going on here, although thankfully, it’s not too intrusive. It’s just a bit off putting to be confronted with a building site when you walk in off the street!

It’s a straightforward and relatively short journey to get from Tissa to Goyambokka just 3km outside Tangalle. We don’t have to wait long to pick up a bus just outside the guest house which takes us along the coast road to Tangalle and then a short tuk tuk ride to Green Garden Cabanas at Goyambokka. No need to worry about finding the bus stop either, all buses here can be hailed from anywhere on the roadside, making travelling ultra convenient, providing the busis not already crowded to overflowing. Fortunately on this occasion there is plenty of room, but we have to pay for an extra seat for our luggage!

Green Garden Cabanas has four wooden floored cabanas on stilts and a stone cottage that wouldn’t look out of place in the Yorkshire Dales, all set in lush gardens with a a variety of palms and trees. Two pretty chestnut ponies wander the grounds and seem to come and go down the little lane outside as they please. There is also a very good dog howing choir in the early evening!

The completely deserted beach is just a couple of minutes walk away. At this time of year all the beaches have huge crashing breakers churning up a mixture of white foam and sand. Hart to believe that in the high season the water is perfectly calm. A walk along this small cove takes us across the point to another small beach beyond. Even here we are stalked by tuk tuk driver – the word has gone out that tourists are about – touting for business.

There are some seriously vicious ants here and I get a nasty nip from from one of these agressive not-so-little mini beasties as I’m hanging out our washing. Much more painful than a bee, or even a hornet’s, sting and much more long-lasting.

Food here is excellent but the portions are enormous!

Yala National Park and strict nature reserve together cover an area of 126,786 hectares accessed along bone jangling unsurfaced roads.  A glorious landscape of scrub, light forest, grassland and brackish lagoons with blue seas sparkling in the distance.   Most people seem to come here with a driver, tracker and guide which seems quite excessive since we manage more than adequately with a driver who does the job of all three.

With only 25 or so in the whole park, Leopards are particularly difficult to track down and not everyone who visits Yala is lucky enough to see one.   So spotting one is  our driver’s number one priority.  Quite incredibly he eventually manages to find one  sleeping high up in a tree, the only one anyone has seen this morning, and there are quite a few jeeps circling the park looking for one. We come alongside a group of elephants and a jackal wandering nochalantly down the road quite unperturbed by us as he saunters round our stationary jeep and continues on his way. Mongoose, buffalo, wild boar, sambar, spotted deer, crocodiles and many, many birds including, ibis, egrets, eagles, darters, kingfishers, bee eaters, painted storks and many more which we can’t identify are all within a few yards of the jeep. The only animal we didn’t see was the shaggy coated sloth bear. A stop at the river for some respite from the discomforts of the jeep is a welcome relief. Frogs skittering across the surface of the water and some entertaining monkeys provide an added diversion.

We round off our trip with a quick stop at the beach and then back to town for some lunch and to nurse our battered bodies. It’s an experience well worth the effort involved in getting here.

Once we get to Panama directly south of Arugam Bay and turn west away from the coast we are soon onto ununsurfaced road, through rice paddies and lily ponds until after about an hour we reach Crocodile Rock, the largest granite outcrop amongst a group of similar rocks in this otherwise completely flat coastal plain. Crocodile Rock not surprisingly, takes it’s name from it’s remarkable resemblance to the crocodiles that populate the waters around these parts. From a certain angle and with the help of a bit more imagination, like a reclining buddha. For those with a less spiritual inclination, a pair of breasts spring to mind.

The climb to the top of Crocodile Rock defeats me which is unusual, I think I must have a touch of heat exhaustion. Or perhaps it is a combination of the sun beating down from a cloudless sky, the steep scramble over the rock and all our previous activities catching up with me, but today I am completely depleted of energy. I manage to get half way up, and even from here the views of the paddies and lagoons are enthralling.

Also among these gigantic rocks is a simple Buddhist cave temple and a stupa or is it a dagoba, I can never tell the two apart. There is also a large rock pool here which is reputed to be home to a croc, but all that is visible today are hundreds of fish. The Stupa is attracting many buddhist monks clad in saffron robes who are making their way up from buses in the car park as we head back to our tuk tuk.

Okanda slightly further south is a home to Murugan Devale, an Hindu complex with a colourful gateway tower which survived to 2004 tsunami and was in recent times th scene of fighting between the LTTE and the army. Now it is once more a stopping point for thousands of pilgrims who undertake the Pada Yatra pilgrimage walking from Jaffna in the north to Kataragama in the south. Today it is almost deserted save for a handful of worshippers and the man who runs the little palm-thatched store. A stroll away is a completely empty crescent beach with thunderous surf.

Lunch at the guest house and complete R&R in an attempt to overcome complete exhaustion. Dinner at Lucky’s.

Not much to do but chill today, although we take a stroll north along the beach towards Pottuvil and the sandbar that separates the see from a small inland lagoon. Lunch at Lucky’s and a rather underwhelming beach bbq at Rocco’s in the evening.

Late afternoon we take a tuk tuk through the back streets Pottuvil to the Pottuvil lagoon for an ‘eco’ tour. We are punted around this wonderful wetland on a raft made from planks laid across two narrow canoe hulls. The lagoon is a mix of mangroves and reeds and is bursting with wildlife including crocodiles, water monitors and birds galore – are real twitcher’s paradise. Apparently the crocodiles don’t attack men only steal the fish from their nets, which I guess must be true given the number of fishermen that stand in the water casting their nets. I wouldn’t want to put it the test though. Only the sound of the water gently lapping the hulls interupts the calls of the birds in this unspoilt sanctuary.

More curious children at the landing stage to greet our return, some overcoming evident shyness to come and take a closer look at these strange foreigners and all eager to have their photos taken and to peer at the result.

The rock temple on the other hand is definitely worth a visit.  This 2000-year-old temple is built under a rock overhang with a bodhi tree alongside draped with a cloth.  The driver disappears to find a monk who opens the temple so we can take a look inside where there is a particularly serene reclining buddha, two sitting buddhas and decorations painted on the walls and ceiling. 

When we arrive at the waterfall my foot is bleeding profusely but there is no sign of any cut and no pain.  My foot continues to bleed all afternoon and I decide to pay a visit to the medical centre.  The centre is open but the doctor is absent and won’t be back until 6.  By which my foot has stopped bleeding and all that is evident is a small pin prick between two of my toes.  Apparently, the most likely explanation is a leech has taken a liking to me and having had its fill, dropped off.  According to Frosty the vet, who we meet in a local bar, leeches don’t carry any disease and the bleeding only last for abut four hours.  Being suitably reassured, We sit back and enjoy our cocktails!

For those who cannot face the challenge of Adam’s Peak (2242m) with its 8000 or so steps to the top, there is always Little Adam’s Peak in Ella.  It may be considerably smaller but it is much gentler on the joints.  It is an easy stroll up through the tea gardens, with a short, not-to-steep climb up some steps for the final ascent to the top and good panoramic views of the surrounding valleys.  The scenery around Ella is much more rugged and dramatic than Nurawa Eliya and as a result the tea planatations aren’t as extensive.

The tea pickers have a little sideline earning money for posing for photographs.  They eagerly invite you to take their photo, some even providing their name and address in the hope that you will send them a copy, but all expect some litle ‘help’ in return. After snapping four of these diminutive ladies  home for lunch and giving them 20 rupees apiece, which buys half a kilo of rice or thereabouts, we move on up the trail before any more pickers come along.

On the way down we stop in a little wayside cafe, although perhaps cafe is rather overstating the pretensions of this covered platform with a view and a couple of tables offering coconut juice straight from the tree complete with outer husk, a hole for a straw slashed in the top with a machete. 

We discovered Kottu Roti at lunch time and it is delicious.  There is a little cafe in Ella with a couple of tables that does the chopped roti with vegetables and spiced up with garlic, cinnamon, cloves and ginger freshly cooked.  Mmmm!  Definitely recommended.  As the man there told us several times as he extolled the virtue of his kottu rotis, others have ‘no garlic, no cinnamon, no cloves, no cinnamon’.

We have met a Dutch/French couple staying at Hilltop who are at the start of a 12-month tour, so we have had lots to chat about and stories to swap.  Their trip will take them from south-east Asia to Australia and New Zealand and then on to Paraguay, Chile and Argentina. We are quite envious;  perhaps we will make it to South America one of these days.

A Dutch group upgrade just before us and their canny guide gives the guard a backhander and they get away without paying the full fare. We meanwhile are clobbered for the extra fiver!  To put this into perspective the two first class fares cost 6.5 pounds!

The mountain scenery between Nurwara Eliya and Ella is really stunning, far more even than our earlier journey from Kandy to Nurwara Eliya.  If only we had the same seats!

We are staying at the Hilltop Guest House in Ella which has fabulous views through Ella Gap;  on a clear day, which are probably a rare occurence, it is said that is possible to see the lighthouse on the coast.  The room has a decent shower with hot water, which is something of a luxury in Sri Lankan guest houses, but the room is slightly damp which a problem which only seems to effect room number 5.  The family who run it are very friendly and speak good English.  Our room on the ground floor opens onto a shared terrace and a small garden. 

Ella is a very small village, which is the only place we have been to so far that seems to have any noticeable tourist infrastructure.  Here there are numerouse restaurants and cafes – and even bars selling alcohol – which are aimed specifically at the few tourists who come here.  There is nothing much here to draw tourists, which makes it all the touristy side even more strange – a few walks, a couple of waterfalls and temples and tea plantations.  Not exactly a major draw. Perhaps it the laid back vibe.

We leave Nuwara Eliya at 5am in order to be here by 7.30 so that we can get the best views from the escarpment at ‘World’s End’ before the mists envelope the area as they are prone to do in the late morning. 

We have hired a car and driver to bring us the two hours from Nuwara Eliya and we have come with an American who is staying in our guest house.  ‘Mr’ Lee, as he is deferentially referred to by Wasantha who runs the guest house, is an older gentleman who divides his time between India and Sri Lanka.  He spends 9 months of the year in a guest house in Mount Abu in Rajasthan and three months here in a suite at the King Fern Bungalow.  Mr Lee has suggested that he join us, on the basis that it will save us all money and so we readily agree.  Mr Lee has a very wry sense of humour and is an entertaining, if slightly eccentric, companion.  However, he does have his own agenda which involves trying to persuade us to extend the trip to take in some botanical gardens and a visit to a property he owns.  This will add a further 50km to the trip and cost an additional 3000 rupees on top of the 3,900 we are already paying. 

Mr Lee has that forthright, voluble  manner, shared by many Americans, which enables him to effortlessly assume centre stage in any situation.   When we arrive Mr Lee is undecided about which walk to do.  Having been to Horton Plains and undertaken the circular walk several times before, he is inclined to trek up one of the peaks, but due to the early hour the visitor centre is closed and  he has a host of questions to be answered before he can make a decision.  Eventually someone is found who can speak English and on the strengto of the information provided Mr Lee decides to undertake the climb, while we head for the cirular walk. 

Finally its settled – Mr Lee is going to climb Kirigalpotta and we are doing the circular walk and we hurry off eager to get ahead of a large, school party that has just appeared. 

The grasslands of Horton Plains are quite a striking contrast to anything we have seen elsewhere in Sri Lanka.  Surprisingly, Rhodadenrons are dotted across the grassland – apparently a native species – and so is European gorse.  There are Sambar deer, a few leopards and shaggy bear monkeys, none of which are much in evidence unfortunately.  Although we do see a couple of monkeys and a impressive lone stag which comes right up to the car to have his photograph taken.

The two highlights of the walk, apart from the wonderful scenery, is World’s end, where the plateau comes to an abrupt end at a stunning escarpment that falls 880m and provides some fabulous views towards the south coast, and Baker Falls.  The latter involves a scramble down through the forest to the base of the falls and another to a viewing point half way up the falls.  Both well worth the effort.

When we arrive back at Farr Inn, Mr Lee is waiting for us.  He didn’t manage the climb to the summit of Kirigalpotta.  It turns out that it was twice the distance he been led to believe and the trail wasn’t clearly marked, so he has turned back.

We decline his suggestion that we go on to the Botanical Gardens and decide instead to return to Nuwara Eliya.  But not before Mr Lee has instigated two stops at garden centres along the way to buy plants for the guest house gardens and another stop to purchases some glasses and other items, again for the guest house.  We are slightly bemused by his completely unself-conscious cheek when it comes to commandeering our outing!

By the time we get back to Nuwara Eliya the mists are rolling down the valley and visibility at the guest house is down to zero – we can’t even see the houses across the road.

Nuwara Eliya is a town of 26,000 sprawling across the valley floor and up into the hills. The housing isn’t dense by any means and most people appear to have some land on which to cultivate vegetables either commercially or for their own consumption. But the most of land here is given over to tea.

Higher up in Hill Country is cloud rain forest and Nuwara Eliya is often shrouded in mist and low cloud, which can sweep down from the hills very swiftly and disperse just as quickly.

Nuwara Eliya has a lingering Britishness;  it’s not for nothing that it is dubbed ‘Little England’.  From the architecture of some of it’s public buildings and historic hotels to the flora, the tradition of the gentlemen’s club still in evidence at the stone and mock tudor Hill Club to the immaculately formal gardens of the Grand Hotel and St Andrews Hotel, this in many ways is a throwback to a colonial past.

Today Nuwara Eliya is primarily a holiday and weekend retreat for wealthy and not-so-wealthy Sri Lankans who come to escape the heat, play golf and enjoy the racing.  Away from the rather down-at-heel centre of town, Nuwara Eliya is picturesque and quaint as can be.  The only thing to marr this peaceful idyll is the thick, black exhaust fumes that belch from every bus, lorry and van.  Lack of effective emissions control is endemic in Sri Lanka, and the only saving grace is that there isn’s much traffic.

The traditional image of the tea picker sporting a wicker basket carried by a strap across the head has given way, unfortunately for the environment, to the pedestrian plastic sack carried in a similar fashion but much lighter and less cumbersome. 

Only the bud and top two leaves are picked and each bush is picked every five days and the tea pickers pick a minimum of 18 kilos of tea a day for which they earn a basic wage of 500 rupees a day.  This is well below the average wage, but is supplemented with free housing, health care, education for their children, wedding and funerals paid for, in fact most of their expenses are paid for and they are also provided with land on which to grow vegetables.  Most of the pickers are Indian Tamils brought over by the British specifically to work the tea plantations introduced to Sri Lanka after the coffee plantations were destroyed by fungus.

All the tea grown in Sri Lanka comes from the same type of bush; flavour is determined by the altitude at which it is grown and strength by how finely it is chopped.  Tea bushes are productive for at least 50 years and are pruned back every five years.  The processing of the tea is quite uncomplicated as we discover from our tour of Mackwoods tea factory. The whole cycle only takes 24 hours from picking to packing.  The stages are withering the leaf using fans, rolling and chopping the leaf, fermentation, hot air drying, winnowing the stalks, grading and packing.  The processed tea is sent to auction in Colombo and is blended by the likes of Liptons and Brooke Bond for strength and flavour.  The tour completed we sit in the sun with a huge pot of tea and a piece of chocolate cake.  How perfectly civilised!

There are numerous waterfalls in the vicinity, many of which can be seen cascading down the hillside next to the road, but a couple require a little more effort. The views are wonderfully picturesque with the tea plantations carpeting the hills, occasionally interspered with vegetable gardens, and the Miwara Ganga snaking towards the dammed Lake Gregory which provides hydro electricity for the area.

Despite the extensive tea planations, which seem to occupy every last square foot of the hillsides, this is also a major vegetable growing area.  In fact it is the only area in Sri Lanka where cold weather vegetables can be grown:  carrots, cabbages, leeks, beetroot, potatoes, lettuce and green beans are all cropped four times a year.  Small vegetable terraces are with neatly raised beds separated by deep channels to disperse the heavy rains are squeezed amongst the houses to provide commerically and domestically grown vegetables which find their way all over the island and onto the local road side stalls.

After our tour we take spend some time looking around this unlikeliest of towns.  Originally established by the British as a retreat from the heat of the lowlands, it is like stepping back in time with its English architecture and toytown feel.  Not for nothing is this town referred to as ‘Little England’. There is a horse racing track and an international golf course, the latter kept in immaculate condition, but completely devoid of golfers.  Otherwise the only feature of note is the beautifully kept Victoria Park with its perfect lawns and glorious flowerbeds overflowing with dahlias, gypsophylia, antirhinums, marigolds, busy lizzies, lilies and numerous other familiar blooms.  Just beautiful.  Unfortunately though, one of the small pavilions has been subject to an incongrous promotional make-over including a large tinted pvc canopy and double glazed windows alongside which are advertising boards promoting the myriad benefits of pvc windows.  Quite bizarre.

All this before lunch!  Lunch in a small pastry shop.  No menu, just a plate of savoury pastries to choose from;  simply pay for what you eat.  But try not to think about how many people may have man-handled them before you!  Lunch for two:  less than a pound.

It’s 65km from Kandy to Nuwara Eliya but the train journey takes 4 hours as it winds up through the hills with spectacular views most of the way.  Neatly clipped tea bushes carpet the hill sides and there are a few tea pickers to be seen on the slopes cloaked in plastic capes to ward off the rain and with large plastic sacks hanging from their heads.
Nuwara Eliya nestles between the surrounding hills about 1800m above sea level and our guest house seems to be a long way up the hillside away from the centre.  We are staying at King Fern Bungalow and are picked up at the station in Nanu Oya about 6km away.  By the time we arrive we are beginning to feel that the location is far too remote.  But this is definitely the cleanest and most attractive guest house we stayed at by far.  There are fantastic views of the town below from the balcony outside our room and also from the dining and sitting room. Plus there is internet. 

The family – mother and three brothers – who run the bungalow (which is a complete misnomer since the building is on several levels) and King Fern Cottage further down the hill – are very friendly and attentive and the puckish brother who seems to do most the work is very chatty and keen to tell us all we might want to know about Nuwara Eliya and we are in danger of information overload.   Mamma surprisingly manages to make herself understood despite her very limited pidgin English and bird-like voice and is famed for her cooking, which sadly turns out to be not quite as good as she likes to believe.

It’s distinctly cooler here, overcast and wet.  In fact rains heavily most of the afternoon and well into the evening.  So plans to take a walk down into town, which we are assured only takes 10 minutes by the short-cut, will have to wait until tomorrow and we hunker down in front of a wood fire in our fleeces instead – and yes, it is that cool!

The bus fare into Kandy sets us back 6 rupees, which puts the tut tut fare of between 150 and 250 rupees into perspective.  Our destination today is the Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya about 6km from the centre of town.  But first we take a look round the central market.  It is surprisingly well organised and clean by Asian standards. It  is arranged around a well-cared for central courtyard garden with a pond.  There are the usual food stalls here on the ground floor – meat butchered on premises, fresh and dried fish and stalls heaving with fresh fruit and vegetables.  On the upper floor are stalls selling clothes, household and leather goods, toys and so on.  I’m looking for a sarong and one of the stallholders is very keen to ensure I find what I want, taking me from stall to stall until I find a rather nice, piercingly blue silk sarong.  Of course, having bought something I become a prime target and in order to get to the exist we have to run lhe gauntlet of the rest of the stallholders all eager to sell their wares.

The intention is to get a bus to Peradeniya, but like many of our intentions it is quickly thwarted.  There is nothing so sophisticated as numbered bus stops or anything at all in the way of signage giving information about where to catch the bus you want.  Asking passersby only results in being told some contradictory flimflam about how full the bus will be, that there are long queues, we will have to wait hours and the buses only leave when they are full.  All leading to the inevitable pitch for a taxi or a tut tut.  One man offers to drive us for 300 rupees, which at less than two pounds seems like a bargain until we see the state of the rust heap he wants to take us in.  In the end we take a tut tut for 300.  Once on our way the driver skillfully sells a return trip including waiting time for 1000 rupees.  And once again convenience wins out.

The Botanical Gardens are quite spectacular and very well kept.  Again rather at odds with the general infrastructure of the Kandy which is anything but.  It’s a shady haven of peace away from pollution and noise outside.  At 60 hectares, these is the largest botanical gardens in Sri Lanka and are bounded on three sides by the longest of Sri Lanka’s rivers, the Mahaweli Ganga.  There are avenues of palms, a flower garden, a suspension footbridge over the river, giant bamboo and a delightful orchid house.   A splendid Javanese fig tree, which although showing signs of age, dominates the Great Lawn with a span of some 2500 square metres.  But the strangest tree must be the Canonball tree which has flowers growing from the trunk and round hard-shell fruits the size of cannonballs and and pretty heavy too!

The front of the temple was extensively damaged by an LTTE bomb in 1998 although there is little evidence of the damage now.  Although there is still tight security including barracades around the entrance to the complex and screening of visitors. 

The temple is surrounded by a moat and is a wonderful example of traditional Sri Lankan temple design with carved stone pillars and decorated wooden beams supporting a tiled roof to form a galleried cloister.  In the central courtyard is the two-storey tooth shrine surmounted by a  gilded and rather out-of-place modern canopy on metal supports built with Japanese donations.  The temple was mainly constructed by Kandyan Kings during the 17th and 18th centuries and is decorated with some wonderful painted walls and ceilings. 

Behind the central courtyard is the new Ahut Maligawa shrine hall which displays several buddhas and a sequence of paintings around the walls depicting scenes from the life of Buddha and the saga of the tooth relic.  The upper two floors of the Ahut Maligawa house the Sri Delada Museum which contains a number of artifacts, some facsimile documents dating from British rule and photographs of the damage caused to the temple by the 1998 bomb.

Also within the temple grounds are the Audience Hall – an open-sided pavilion with carved wooden columns;  Rajah Tusker Hall where the stuffed remains of Rajah the ceremonial Muligawa Tusker who served the temple for 50 years and died in 1988 is on display.

After the temple we visit two adjacent Buddhist Devales or temples to the gods who support Buddha, and St Paul’s Catholic Church which retains a strong British flavour with its flowering arranging rotas and notices written in very old fashioned English.

Kandy is probably the most picturesque town visited so far.  The town centre is the usual unprepossessing array of small, open-fronted shops with a jumble of signage and streets teaming with people.  But the setting around the serpentine lake with the steeply rising jungle-covered hills all around is really quite lovely. The lake was created in 1807 by Sri Wickrama Rajasinha, the last ruler of Kandy.

A walk along the south side of the lake reveals a huge amount of wildlife including pelicans, heron, 4-foot water monitors, hundreds of birds, bats hanging in the trees, and an amazing number of fish.  The only thing that marrs a lakeside walk is the pollution from the heavy traffic that crawls along belching out thick black fumes.  Sri Lanka has a long way to go in terms of emissions control. 

After spending some time in one of the markets and having a look round the centre of town we finally locate the train station and purchase tickets to Nuwara Eliya (pronounced Nureliya) for the 28th.  We walk up the hill to the Raya Wasala Park also known as Wace Park and are pleasantly surprised to find a beautifully tended formal garden quite at odds with the surrounding down-at-heel city centre.  It’s another place frequented by young courting couples who seem to occupy almost every bench in the park.  In fact apart from us, there are only  young couples and we feel rather like intruders.

In the late afternoon we go to the Kandyan Art Association and Cultural Centre of the north side of the lake for a performance of traditional Kanyan and Sri Lankan low country dances.  There are nine dances performed by a troupe of men and women accompanied by a drum ensemble.  The performance finale is a very impressive display of walking over hot coals.  The costumes are wonderful and whilst it’s interesting from a cultural perspective, much of it is poorly rehearsed and choreographed.

Sigiriya or Lion Rock is an awesome sight; its sheer walls rising high above the surrounding jungle, the magma plug of a long-since eroded volcano.  Historically the summit has been the site of both a palace and a monastery.  Legend has it that King Kasyapa 477-493 built his palace here, choising it as safe bolt hole after murdering his father.  More recent archaeological evidence suggests that it was a long-standing Buddhist monastery and perhaps there is some truth in both. 

The base of the rock is approached through the landscaped Royal Gardens which consist of the lovely symmetrical water gardens, boulder gardens and terraced gardens. Here there are the foundations of buildings, bathing pools, caves once used as shrines with seating carved from the rock, evidence of walls and paintings and boulders that once formed the basis of buildings. 

The climb to the top starts with a series of granite steps through the boulders.  Half way up the rock there are two modern spiral staircases leading to a sheltered gallery in the sheer rock face.  In this overhang there are a series of amazingly well preserved and vibrantly colourful paintings of buxom women with slender waists which date back hundreds of years, perhaps to the time of King Kasyapa, although noone seems know exactly how long ago they were painted. 

Beyond the frescos a path clings to the sheer rock face protected on the outside by the 3m high Mirror Wall, so called because of the glaze that gives a sheen to the surface.  The wall is inscribed with a 1000 years of graffiti much of it commenting on beauty of the frescos.  At the end of the path more steps lead up to a large platform which is full of colourful dragonflies.  From here the final ascent is throgh a pair of enormous lion’s paws, all that remain of a colossal crouching brick lion whose mouth in earlier times was the gateway to the summit.  From here a series of metal steps have been erecting that appear to cling precariously to the side of the rock.  The climb which looks daunting from ground level, is actually not so difficult, despite the fact that some visitors, the younger ones particularly, seem to be struggling and have to be cajoled by their guides to continue to the top.

The summit is 1.6 hectares and was once covered in buildings.  Now all that remains are the foundations and a large tank hewn in the rock and which looks remarkably like a swimming pool but was probably a reservoir.

After lunch we head for Dambulla to the Royal Rock Temple, probably one of the most famous of all Sri Lanka’s sites.  The Temple is actually five caves, the earliest dating from the first century BC and the most recent from the 19th century, containing a spectacular collection of 150 painted statues of the Buddha carved from the rock.

Whilst we’ve been looking at the rock temples Mustalif has found a driver he knows who is willing to take  us to Kandy at no extra cost to us.  This seems a much better arrangement than going by bus.  On the way we stop at a Hindu devale its towering roof ornately decorated with numerous statues of gods, including a dead ringer for Freddy Mercury!

Muthalif has booked us into Hillway Tour Guest House near the eastern end of Kandy Lake.  The first room we are shown is pretty grim so we upgrade to a much larger room with a balcony and good views from a huge picture window.  It’s not exactly clean though, but then none of the guest houses so far have been spotless. The whole place has a air of decrepitude about it.  A shame, because with a bit of TLC is could be very nice indeed.

By this time it’s mid afternoon and we take a stroll along the north side of the lake into Kandy town.  Kandy Lake is the focal point of the town which spreads up into the surrounding lush green hills.  It’s about 20 minutes walk from the guest house to the centre at the western end of the lake.  By the time we get there it is threatening rain and anticipating a downpour we hop into a tut tut.  The driver has no idea where our guest house is and completely ignores our attempts to direct him preferring to stop several times to ask for directions.  We could have quite easily walked in the time it takes him to find it.

Polonnaruwa is one of Sri Lanka’s ancient cities and one of the nine former capitals.  There are extensive ruins, both monastic and royal, spread across four sites:  the Royal Palace group, the Quadrangle and the Northern and Southern groups. There is also an excellent small archaeological museum which contains artifacts and stone carvings that have been romoved from the site during restoration. Of particular interest are the scale model reconstructions of some of the main buildings giving an useful insight into what they may have originally looked like.

The first stop is the Southern Group to see Potgul Vihara and a fine 4m high rock carving of King Parakramabahu (1153 – 1186) – or possibly Sage Palasti – holding a manuscript or is it a yoke? – there seems to be some uncertainty about who this might be and what he is holding.  And beautiful and life-like as it is, the presence of a corrugated tin canopy goes some way to compromise its artistic integrity. Potgul Vihara is a a library dagoba, unusual in that it is a hollow structure (most dagobas are almost entirely solid) with four smaller solid dagobas arranged around the central dome to form a rectangle. 

At the Royal Palace Group we meet up with a guide, this time arranged by Mustalif, although, as it turns out, we could have easily managed without him as the site, unlike Anuradhapura, is well signed. 

Polonnaruwa is as spread out as Anuradhapura and some form of transport is definitely required to get between the groups of ruins.  It is more varied than Anaradhapura in terms of the types of buildings and also more intact.

Notable buildings in the Royal Palace group are the Royal Palace itself, a massive structure that once comprised seven floors, the audience hall with its freize of elephants and carved, Chinese-influenced lions at the top of the stairs, and the bathing pool (Kumara Pokuna) which was fed by two stone crocodiles and flowed out into the rice paddies beyond.  All date from the reign of KIng Parakramabahu I.

The Quadrangle group is a compact group comprising the vatadage with four entrances onto its surrounding terrace with fine guardstones and moonstones; the Thuparama Gedige – a hollow Buddhist temple, and unlike many in the ancient cities was built  entirely of stone and has its roof intact. It is strongly influenced by Hinduism and contains a number of Buddha statues; the Gal Pota, a colossal stone book weighing 25 tonnes, which was dragged from Mihintale 100km away;  the Hatadage tooth relic temple which was said to have been built in 60 days;  the Latha-Mandapaya – a small dagoba encircled by stone pillars shaped like lotus stalks and topped with unopened buds; the Satmahal Prasada – an Angkor Wat-styple pyramid consisting of six diminishing  storeys;  and the Atadage.

Close to the Quadrangle are two Hindu temples the Shiva Devale No 1 and No 2.  The former has been recontructed and is notable for the precision of the stone work.  Also in this area is Pabula Vihara, a typical dagoba from the period of Parakramabahu, probably used as a library and containing a statue of Buddha.

The highlight of Polonnaruwa though is the Gal Vihara, a group of four superb Buddha images carved from a single long slab of granite which are probably the most famous group of Buddha images in Sri Lanka.  The standing Buddha is 7m tall, the reclining image entering parinirvana is 14m long.  The other two images are both of seated Buddhas, one in a niche in rock face.

It had been our intention to go onto to climb the rock at Sigirya in the afternoon, but after lunch there is a downpour and we are slightly relieved to have to postpone Sigirya until tomorrow;  I don’t think we could have found the energy for the climb after this mornings activity!

So by 4pm we are at our hotel just outside Sigirya taking it easy.  Our room faces onto a terrace with views of the lush gardens.  Very pleasant.

Mustalif is trying to wriggle out of taking us all the way to Kandy as we had arranged.  He is trying to suggest that we had originally agreed to go only as far as Dambulla, which is definitely not the case.  But once again we are caught out, because we didn’t write down what we had agreed with him.  The actual arrangement was that he would take us as far as Kandy unless we decided to stop over in Dambulla, in which case we would make our own way to Kandy and he would return to Anaradhapura. This has become an issue now only because the rain has put us half a day behind schedule and means he will not be able to get back to Kandy tomorrow.  In a way, we can see where he is coming from, but instead of explaining the real reason, he is trying to make out that this was the plan all along.  Eventually, he offers to pay for the bus from Dambullah to Kandy.  We decide to sleep on it and let him sweat a little.

Sri Lanka is peppered with ancient man-made tanks (as well as innumerable lakes and ponds) which serve to irrigate the paddy fields.  Today we drive along the earth embankment that dams one such tank,the Kala Wewa, where a line of colourful traditional narrow-hulled fishing boats with crude wooden stabilisers lashed to one side are beached at the water’s edge. 

It’s Good Friday and several villages are holding events to mark this national holiday.  One is in the midst of a cycle race, whilst another is holding a ladies marathon.  We stop to watch the latter as a number of young women run by each with their supporters in attendance, some with motor cycle outriders, all drenched in water to keep cool in the stifling early morning heat.  Some are young girls in their early teens;  all are running barefoot, which is a feat in itself (pun unintended) given the scorching heat of the tarmac.

Further along our route there is a fete in full swing and we stop to mingle with the crowds and watch some of the events:  teams climbing the greasy pole to retrieve the flag at the top – no one makes it while we were – one-handed pillow fighting whilst sitting on a raised log, children’s races, and a competition to be the fastest to weave a palm leaf which generates considerable excitement amongst the onlookers.  All the events have monetary prizes attached which are funded from donations made by local businesses.

Our first scheduled stop is at Aukana to see the magnificent, 12m high standing Buddha finely carved from the rock face and dating back to the 12th/13th century. The Buddha stands in the ashiva mudra pose signifying blessing with a burst of fire above the head to mark the achievement of englightenment.  It is also embellished with an enormous colony of bees hanging from one elbow!

Ritigala, on the other hand, is rather less impressive.  These partly restored ruins and caves are the remains of a once extensive monastic complex spread over a hill deep inside the Ritigala Strict Nature Reserve. On arriveal we are immediately pounced on by one of the Department of Archaeology employees who follows us round insisting on acting as a guide.  He is so persistent that eventually we agree to let him take us round the site for 400 rupees.  But after the umpteenth time of being asked which country we are from we realise that his English is more or less none existent and we are in for a pretty perfunctory tour of what amounts to a not particularly impressive set of ruins.  We scramble through the ungrowth of the hillside looking at the monastic caves and end up at a pair of wattle and daub houses, where the guide makes a clumsy attempt to kiss me while Andy is outside taking photographs.  Needless to say he did not get his 400 rupees and was lucky not to get a thump for his trouble!

After lunch we take a jeep safari into the Kaudulla National Park to see some of the 150 wild elephants that live there.  We have a bit of trouble tracking them down to begin with and then getting up close enough to get a good view.  The best spot is a rocky lookout where at least a dozen or so other jeeps are congregated where one group of elephants is gradually making their way closer to us until they come right up to the edge of the rock where we are standing, seemingly quite oblivious to what by now was a quite large group of chattering onlookers. 

Luckily the rain holds off until we get back to our car and then the heavens open as transfer from the jeep.  There is a rather nasty accident on the road to Polonnaruwa involving a van that has come off the road and become wrapped round a pole. Several drivers have parked up to offer assistance and Mustalif stops to do the same. He reports that the driver of the van and his son both escaped without a scratch.

We are not too further along the road when our van cuts out  we find ourselves on the side of the road once more with Mustalif muttering to himself as he tries to find the problem.  Eventually he decides a fuse has gone.  By this time it’s pitch black and we sit in the dark with buses thundering passed feeling uncomforably vulnerable and wondering whether we might be stuck for the night.  Meanwhile Mustalif stands in the road with his head in the driver’s footwell going through all the fuses to identify which one has shorted. Half-an-hour later  we are back on the road and arrive in Polonnaruwa in time for dinner.

A series of 1840 granite steps lead up to the top of this shady hill, but we take the easy option and start from the car park half way up. Our guide turns out to be very knowledgable and imparts a lot of information about the history and background to the site, the ruins and dagobas. Particularly useful as none of the sites we have visited so far either here or in Anuradhapura have any signage and the information provided in the Lonely Planet can be a bit patchy and in some cases unreliable.
 

The first two dagobas here are in varying states of disrepair (Kantaka Cheiya, 12m high c 247-207 and  Mahaseya Dagoba), which are decorated with stone carvings unlike those in Anuradhapura which are quite plain.  There are a number of other ruins which are little more than the foundations of monastary buildings including the hospital, refectory and assembly hall. 

Few ancient buildings in Sri Lanka were built of stone;  most were constructed of brick foundations, stone pillars and wooden beams with tiled roofs, which means little remains of what were once grand and imposing buildings.  But two carved stone slabs provide detailed information about the regulations of the monastary and details of daily life even down to the token system used in the refectory.  There are remnants of water channels, pit valves (invented by the Sri Lankans), stone troughs which were used as bain maries to keep food hot in the refectory and a water tank that fed a stream of water through the mouth of a stone lion for showering.  All evidence an orderly and sophisticated society.

It is said that Mihintale is where Buddhism was first introduced to Sri Lanka. Here Mahinda, son of the Buddhist emperor Ashoka, met the Sri Lankan king Devenampiya Tissa by a mango tree and, after testing him with a riddle, considered him a worthy disciple and converted him to Buddhism.  Where the mango tree once stood now stands the small but rather lovely Ambasthale Dagoba, one of the oldest in Sri Lanka. Entry to this sacred site is not included in our Cultural Triangle round ticket, as with most sites run by monks, so there is an additional 1000 rupees to pay.  As with all sacred sites shoes and hats have to be removed, but although we have remembered our socks today it is quite a shady spot and the ground is relatively cool.

From this point it is possible to scramble up the rock to a lookout at the summit with the help of roughly hewn foot holes and a handrail.  The handrail is so hot that the hands need more protection than the feet and so the socks come in useful after all.  The views from the top are quite spectacular.

We return to Adhadradhapura in time for a late lunch before taking a gentle stroll to the Isurumunya Vihara rock temple about 1.5km from the guest house.  This temple, as it’s name suggests, is hewn into the rock alongside the Tissa Wewa man-made tank.  Anaradhapura has three great tanks, Nuwara Wewa (1600 hectares, 20BC), Tissa Wewa (160 hectares) and Basawakkulama (120 hectares, 4th century BC) which feed the surrounding rice paddies.

There is a huge reclining Buddha in the temple, which is also home to a colony of swifts which fly in out at remarkable speed.  There is also a fine carving in the rock alongside the small stone pool full of fish.  It’s also possible to climb up to the top of this small outcrop of rocks for a view of the surrounding countryside and a closer  look at the stupas which sit on the top. 

We stop to chat to a policeman on the way out who is very interested in our travels, but the skies are looking very threatening and there are distant rumbles of thunder,so we make our apologies and hurry off, not sure if we will find a tut tut before the heavens open.  And we don’t!  Fortunately we have our capes with us and we manage to find shelter in a police hut just as the torrential downpour takes hold. The policeman tries to flag down a tut tut for us, but none are inclined to stop;  they are either set on getting home or reluctant to be pulled over.  Eventually Andy managedto stop one with his piercing whistle and we jump in.  There are no side curtains so the rain pours in, but at least we are on our way.  When we get back we find the garden is awash with rivers of water but at least there is electricity!

Cycling through this gorgeous countryside overloaded with lush vegetation, palms and trees with enormous canopies is just as enjoyable as the ruins and dagobas. This area is not simply an historical site either; the bungalows of local Sri Lankans nestle in the jungle vegetation and several of the dagoabas remain holy places of pilgrimage for many.  In fact the vast majority of visitors to the Sacred City are Sri Lankans with only a small proportion of westerners, mostly in tour groups. 

The grounds in the immediate vicinity of the temples have been cleared and are now mostly shady park land which appears to be maintained by the army.  There are numerous details of soldiers cutting the grass with bill hooks and clearing dead wood.  There is clearly such a surfeit of, presumeably, conscripted soldiers that they can be spared from their military duties to act as gardeners.

By the end of the two days we have covered most of this extensive city including the The BraZen Palace,so called because it was once thought to have a bronze roof, now all that remains are are a few of the 1600 stone columns;  the beautiful cloud white Ruvanvelisaya Dagoba with its frieze of elephants a few of which date back to 140BC;  the Thurparama Dagoba the oldest in Sri Lanka dating from the 3rd century) BC, which unusually is surrounded by four concentric circles of stone pillars which probably once supported a conical roof;  The huge Abhayagiri Dagoba (1st or 2nd century BC; the Jetavanarama Dagoba, the third tallest monument in the world after the Egyptian pyraminds which is is currently being restored and is completely encased in wooden scaffolding – an amazing sight in itself.  As well as Mahasena’s Palace of which little remains except for a glorious carved moonstone; the ruins of the Royal Palace and Kuttam Pokuna, two incredibly preserved stone ponds with a clever filtration system.

Foolishly we forgot to bring socks again, and that has prevented us from being able to get onto the terraces around the dagobas for an up close look around.  I also forgot to sun cream my feet and have spend half the day with my feet in plastic bags to minimise the sunburn. 

This time round we are stopped by a ticket inspector at a ticket booth and finally are able to buy our Cultural Triangle round ticket for $30 each will allow us access to this and a number of other sites between here and Kandy.  There seems to be only two or three ticket boothes in the whole of this enormouse site and none are particularly well signed, but we knew that eventually we would get to pay, either here or at one of the other sites on our tour.

About two thirds of the way round the ancient city cycling seems to be getting significantly harder even down hill which I put down to sheer exhaustion, but it turns out I have a flat tyre.  We are still several kilometers from the guest house and I have visions of having to push the bike all the way back.  But as luck would have it we amazingly come across a man repairing bicycles in a small hut on the roadside and he kindly cleans my valve and pumps up the tyre and we are able to continue on our way.

By the end of two days cycling in the sweltering heat we are exhausted and crash out after dinner.  There is stil is no electricity and there’s been another torrential downpour accompanied by a dramatic electrical storm lasting a couple of hours.

We hire bikes and set out on an orientation ride.  We need to find somewhere to purchase a round ticket for the ‘Cultural Triangle’ which takes in all the ancient cities and sites that fall within the area between Anuradhapura, Pollonaruwa and Kandy.  This ticket for foreign tourists costs $50 pounds and covers  most, but not all the major sights, which would otherwise cost $25 each.  So although expensive by Sri Lankan standards is something of a no-brainer if you plan to visit more than one sight. And according to Lonely Planet it doesn’t allow multiple entry so you are limited to a day per sight. 

In Anuradhapura there are two main sights:  the Sri Maha Bodhi, grown from a cutting brought from India by the sister of Mahinda who introduced Buddhism to Sri Lanka and is of sacred significance to the Sinhalese religion;  and the Sacred City, a sprawling complex of enormous dagobas (stupas) and the ruins of monastic and royal buildings built during the 1000 years as capital from 380 BC to around 800 AD.

Our first stop is the Sri Maha Bodhi which is the centre of a collection of buildings and which is enormously popular with pilgrims who converge on this site for puja (offerings and prayers) particularly in April.  At some 2000 years old, this is the oldest living Bodhi tree in the world and it is showing its age with many of the branches needing support from decorative props. The walls around this and the other bodhi trees that grow here are decked with prayer flags and offerings of jasmine, lotus and frangipanji flowers purchased from stallholders outside.  

From here we cycle the large loop that takes in most of the sites in the sacred city, but it isn’t until we get to the Samhedi Buddha that we find a ticket office.  The cost of two round tickets is 12,000 rupees – more than we have on us, so we will come back tomorrow to cover the sites we haven’t seen today and to pay for our ticket which will also cover us for entry into a number of other ancient monuments including Pollonaruwa and Sigirya.

The sacred city is very spread out and comprises a number of enormous dagobas some still plastered and whitewashed and others in various states of disrepair, denuded of plaster to expose the underlying brick work; and the ruins of a vast number of monastic and royal buildings.  Most of the dagobas are still in use as sacred sites which means that to approach them requires the removal of hats and shoes.  All are surrounded by stone platforms which in the heat of the sun are hot enough to fry an egg on and are painfully hot to our delicate western feet.  Not so for the Sri Lankans who seem to have feet so hardened that they can walk on the hot stones without seemingly experiencing any discomfort, whilst we hop from one patch of shade to another trying to avoid looking completely ridiculous and failing badly.  Unfortunately it limits our circumambulations of the dagobas and in the end we give up the struggle and have to admire them from afar.  We shall bring socks next time.

There is the most almighty storm in the late afternoon which starts while we are in the supermarket.  Thunder, lighning, winds and torrential rain make it impossible to make it back to the guest house and we are forced to take refuge in the coffe shop there until the rain abates.  Half-an-hour later we don our rain capes and venture out.  It is still lightning every few minutes and the torrent of water in the streets as well as the lack of street lighting make cycling impossible so we push the bikes back the last kilometer or so, our way lit only by frequent flashes of lightning, 

Dinner is by candlelight and we are without power for the rest of the evening.

Sri Lanka is also a country where tourists are blantantly over-charged either officially or unofficially.  Entry prices are all artifically inflated, by up to 400 per cent in some cases, and prices for other goods and services seem to be far to high to be supported by the local economy.  We are also beginning to suspect that information imparted here is frequently ‘adjusted’ to suit the giver’s purpose.  Such as the trains that don’t take reservations are always full, that there are no direct buses to certain places making them hideously difficult to get to.  All designed to manipulate  the unsuspecting to taking a certain, more profitable, course of action.  We were even quote two different prices for our train tickets by the government train information office and when it became clear we didn’t want to book a tour package were sent round to the normal ticket window where the price was actually considerably lower.

This is our last day in Colombo.  This afternoon we are taking the train to Anuradhapura, one of Sri Lanka’s ancient cities and one of nine former capitals.  To while away an hour or too before leavng for the station we take a walk around the back streets of Mount Lavinia and discover a pretty suburb of mostly single story bungalows, guest houses and hotels with lush, green gardens overflowing with flowering trees and palms.  It’s a surprising oasis of peace and calm only a few minutes from the manic traffic on Galle Road. 

We find our way to the local train station which is only a stone’s throw from the beach.  The trains from here to Colombo take as long as the bus and are the same price, but don’t run as frequently.  As we walk away we are approached by old man who wants to show us a local temple, so we trundle off with him, knowing that there is going to be a cost attached one way or another.  The temple is hidden away off a back street and has some beautiful if crumbling murals, ceiling mandalas and several buddha statues including an enormous recliningg buddha with lotus flowers painted on the soles of his feet.  The reclining figure signifing buddha’s approaching death and achievement of nirvana.

As we should have anticipated, there is the usual visitors donation book, in which almost everyone before us seems to have given 2000 rupees, which seems an enormous amount when entry fees to other temples are around 100-200 rupees.  But we fall for the psychological blackmail and give 1500.  That, plus the 500 for the old man, make it a rather expensive diversion.

We have a quick bite to eat at the Casserole, which is part of a chain and seems to be quite popular with the locals despite the fact that it serves rather pale imitations of Chinese and European dishes and the Sri Lankan menu is off.  It is also relatively expensive compared to local Sri Lankan restaurants.

We arrive at the Fort railway station in good time but discover that our reservation has been doubled booked by the ticket office. The Sri Lankans who have our seats very graciously make way for us and fortunately are readily able to find alternatives in this far from full 2nd class compartment. 

The journey to Anuradhapura is uneventful and we arrive more or less on time, pick up a taxi for a modest cost arrive at Lake View Tourist Guest House around 9pm.

Our prime, immediate focus today is to organise our onward travel. We are going to Anuradhapura tomorrow;  Sri Lanka’s ancient capital dating back over 2,500 years and the starting point for our tour of the ‘Buddhist Cultural Triangle’.  We purchase a couple of train tickets at the station for a mere 4.22 pounds for the four hour journey.

We had hoped today to experience the hustle and bustle of the central market, but only a handful of stalls are open for business and there is a complete dearth of customers,and head for an all-you-can eat establishment near the docks.  This cafe occuplies old colonial premises with high ceilings and elegant windows which suggest a former life as an tearoom frequented by an altogether different type of clientele. Today its clean and spacious interior is delightfully airy and a row of at least a dozen tureens sits on the counter promising all manner of delights.  A vegetarian meal here is 150 rupees or a mere 84p!

We head back to Mount Lavinia to research and book our accommodation and then once more down to the beach for a light dinner in one of the cafes.  We have to settle for a lime soda to wash it down;  alcohol is off the menu as it is on every full moon day.

Sri Lanka is in the midst of an extended holiday for the New Year which started on Thursday and lasts at least until Monday, probably longer as people take extended holidays which will also encompass another bank holiday next week as well as Easter.  As a result the vast majority of shops are closed and shuttered and the streets in the centre are almost completely devoid of traffic.  It makes for relaxing, stress-free sightseeing but something of its vibrancy is lacking and unfortunately it won’t be returning before we leave on Monday. 

We has planned to look round the central bazaar, but today there are only a few stalls open and no customers.  So, having visited the station to buy our rail tickets for Anuradhapura tomorrow, we decide to head straight for the harbour and a restaurant that is recommended by Lonely Planet. But that too is a casulty of the holiday and we settle instead for another local restaurant, this time with cutlery and some seriously spicy food. 

The harbour is actually a working dock and there is little to see even if it was a working day, so we head instead head for Jami-Ul-Alfar Mosque, an imposing red-and-white striped edifice in a side street of the Pettah district.  Unfortunately, the interior is not so impressive.

A stroll along Galle Face Green is a pleasant way to while-away some time on route to Vidharamahadevi Park further south off Galle Road. The sea is too treacherous here for swimming, but there are still plenty of people careening in waves as the break onto the small patches of sand that are just visible at high tide. 

Our route to Vidharamahadevi Park takes round South Beira Lake where we sit a while enjoying the view.    Vidharamahadevi Park, known as Victoria Park until the 1950s when it was renamed in honour of King Dutugemunu mother, is a well-tended,lush green tropical garden with delightful formal fountains and ponds, many flowering trees, a childrens play area and an amusement park.  Today it is full of families relaxing.  And some of the trees are full of enormous fruit bats hanging like black hankerchieves from the branches. 

We round off the day with a drink in the Lion Bar in Mount Lavinia. This bar’s two notable features are a live three piece group playing music vaguely reminiscent of a south sea island and who move from table to table to serenade the, almost exclusively male, clientele; and an rather novel entrance in the style of a lion’s mouth.

Initial impressions of Colombo, mainly gained from the long drive down Galle Road which runs from the centre of the city south down the coast, is of a not particularly attractive city of rather higgledy-piggedly, unkempt single story shops with run down fascia boards unfettered by planning regulations.  But off the main road there is a network of surprisingly peaceful and attractive residential side streets lush with palms and flowering trees.

Mount Lavinia, we discover, is the main holiday suburb of Colombo and the Mount Lavinia Homestay is only a few minutes walk from beach!  The homestay must be one of the cheapest in Colombo, but is perfectly adequate and we have a large room and there is a pretty front garden.

After taking a nap for a few hours we make our way into Colombo centre which is 30 minutes away by the bus that leaves every few minutes from the top of the road.  Of course, as soon as we get off the bus at the central railway station we have a tut-tut driver on our case and we are easily talked into an hour’s orientation tour of the sights of Colombo.  Four hours later we’ve seen all the mainsights and had a delicious marsala dhosa in a back street cafe frequented by locals and serving food without cutlery.  We have one happy tut-tut  driver who probably can’t believe his luck as having found such a good fare and we are left wondering what we are going to do for the next two days!

Our tour has included, in no particular order: South Beira Lake, the seafront at
Galle Face Green, the white-domed Old Town Hall (also known as White House due to the similarity with the slightly better-known building of the same name), Viharamahadevi Park (previously Victoria Park), the up-market suburb of Cinnamon Gardens, the National Museum (outside only) and Independance Hall.

We stop at South Beira Lake, a pleasant oasis in the centre of the city, to visit the Seema Malakaya Meditation Centre with its gloriously cool central pavilion which catches the breeze off the lake and two side pavilions one filled with Thai bronze buddhas and the other home to a small stupa and two shrines to Hindu gods (Sri Lankans are nothing if not pragmatic).

Close by is the Gangaramaya Hindu Temple with its resident elephant sadly chained all dayan extensive museum much of which amounted to a jumble of bric-a-brac with some wonderful hidden gems such as the carved ivory tusks competing with commemorate plate marking Charles and Diana’s wedding! The most impressive, though is the Kovil with its colourful exterior festooned with painted sculptures of the gods towering skywards.

Our tour is punctuated by lunch in a small back street restaurant, clearly a favourite with locals but probably rarely, if ever, frequented by tourists.  We receive a friendly welcome and with no menu we accept the offer of two marsala dhosas (delicious) and some rather stodgy cake-like accompaniments (not so great) all to be eaten without cutlery.

In the late we take a short stroll from our guest house across the railway tracks and onto the beach which lies just beyond.  The long, sandy beach of Mount Lavinia is crowded with holidaymakers playing cricket,  frolicing in the sea mostly fully clothed or just promenading.  The beach here is lined with small bars and restaurants and every so often a train gently clatters by behind them somehow adding, rather than detracting, from this essentially laid back, local holiday resort.

Onto Terminal 4 for an easy check-in and painless and swift passage through security.  And with an hour and a quarter before boarding, plenty of time for a ‘full English’, or so we thought.  Breakfast finally arrived about 15 minutes before we had to be at the gate and to say it was disappointing was an understatement.  In fact so bad we felt compelled to complain, which yielded a full refund, much to our surprise (as well as the waitress who put the refund through)!

It had been with some trepidation, that we had booked our flights on Jet Airways given that the online reviews were considerably less than favourable.  So much so, that we took the precaution of taking our own food!  Old plans, poor food and bad and unfriendly service were just some of the complaints we’d read about.  It probably goes without saying that price was a significant factor in our decision.  But we were pleasantly surprised:  the flight left on time, the service was excellent, the food was good (by inflight standards, at least), there was an excellent selection of films, we had free drinks all the way and the flight arrived early in Mumbai.  So no grumbles from us.

Bundi - One of the city gates

Bundi is a small town of 100,000 people. The old walled city is typical with its narrow streets, minimal traffic and the usual array of animals wandering unhindered: dogs, cows, goats, pigs even sheep. The Bundi Palace towers over the small man-made lake of Nawal Sagar and above it is the Taragarh Fort; both to be visited tomorrow. Today, we spend the afternoon meandering through the old town with its bustling local bazaar. Tiny shops open directly onto the narrow lanes, their small interiors covered with white mattresses on which clients make themselves comfortable whilst they view the goods – jewellery, fabrics, housewares and so on. In others, men sit idly whiling away the hours as they wait patiently for customers. Others pass the time making goods to sell and tailors’ treadle sewing machines clatter away turning out bespoke Punjabi suits.

Pigs keeping cool in the sewer

This is one of the most rubbish strewn towns we’ve visited with little piles everywhere – some burning – and general litter everywhere. In India, littering is a way of life and everything is discarded wherever it is finished with. Rubbish is either burned or eaten by the animals (and vermin) that inhabit the streets. Anything not combustible or edible – and that usually means plastic – is trodden down into the earth. The roads are in poor condition and in some of the older streets the surface has disintegrated completely.

Ranij-ki-Baori step well

Ranij-ki-Baori step well

There are many impressive water tanks or Baoris in Bundi and we visit the most famous the Ranij-ki-Baori or Queen’s Baori, which is kept locked and is opened up specially for us by a man who seemingly appears from nowhere. We fill in our names and details in the visitors book and are allowed take our time to look around whilst the janitor waits for us. Inside the Baori is magnificently decorated with carvings which take elements from Jain, Moghul and Rajput architecture. It is a monumental structure with a series of stairways which descend 46 metres from street level to a meagre pool, the stagnant remnant of what once was a vast body of water, long sicne depleted as a result of the falling water table and lack of monsoon rains. Half-way down the stairs are surrounded by a gallery and archways span the width of the tank, home to a colony of bats. A stunningly beautiful piece of engineering so lovingly embellished.

The matching pair of step wells Nagar Sangar Kund are not as deep or as magnificently imposing and are enclosed by railings. There is no amenable janitor to give us access and we can only manage a glimpse of these rectangular wells with stairways disappearing into their depths at regular intervals around the periphery.

We have discovered that there is a direct overnight train that runs between Bundi and Delhi which has the benefit of not only saving us a night’s accommodation at Dehli’s over-inflated prices, but also sparing us the tedium of a convoluted route back to Dehli via Jodhpur. But booking the tickets turns out to a far more complicated task than we anticipated. The India Railways online booking system which has proved such a godsend up until now, has decided that it doesn’t like any of our payment cards and after inputting our booking for the umpteenth time without success we decide to head for the booking office at Bundi train station which is located 7kms out of town. But by the time we get there at 11.45 am it is closed for lunch until 12.30. Fortunately the tut-tut driver is happy to wait (at no extra cost – so he is clearly getting well paid at 100 rupees for the return journey) which is just well as there are no other tut-tuts to be seen around this out-of-the way station which seems to have no other train service but the Mewar Express from Udaipur which stops here on its way to Delhi.

Working on the railway

While we wait we watch the comings and goings of this quiet outpost with its one platform. Devoid of trains, it is nonetheless a hive of activity. A gang of 20 or so youngsters, male and female, are relocating concrete sleepers, bringing them from further down the line to deposit them at intervals alongside the platform. The whole back-breaking process is undertaken with the aid of nothing more than two sets of two-wheeled bogies and a crowbar. As there is no lifting equipment the sleepers have to be manhandled onto the bogies and precariously balanced are pushed along the track. They are then off-loaded with the aid of a crowbar, barely missing the rails to land with an almighty thud on the shingles. Finally they are manoeuvred into position and left in readiness for some future project.

The station shows some signs of a general facelift, although not to a particularly high standard. The platform has been recently laid with new paving flags the effect of which has been completely spoilt by a surfeit of mortar which has been smeared liberally across the surface in an attempt to fill the gaps. A lone man is running an ancient cleaner with rotating brushes across the surface in an forlorn attempt, with the aid of a little water, to wash off the mortar.

Eventually we obtain our tickets and make our way back to town passing several water buffalo submerged in a roadside pool and navigating our way round a cow suckling her calf in the middle of the road. As we approach the old town the street is suddenly filled with schoolgirls in the common blue and white shalwar kameez that is the uniform adopted by many schools in Rajasthan.

Flower sellers

We seem to have spent most of our time in Udaipur shopping for presents – for ourselves as well as others. India is a treasure trove of gorgeous handicrafts which are hard to resist. But the need to keep within the airline baggage restrictions and the limited space in the luggage has constrained us and made finding suitable mementos quite a challenge, particularly as we are already carrying two bedspreads purchased in Jodhpur! But today we have found our last present –  for Tim who, surprisingly, has proved the most difficult to buy for. In the process we have acquired two additional bags to accommodate them all and since leaving Jaisalmer have been travelling with six pieces of luggage.

We pick up the kurtah, ordered yesterday, from the tailor and the fit is perfect. Pity I didn’t have more made!  But it is too late now, as we are leaving Udaipur for Bundi this evening.

Jagish Temple detail

We still have time enough to visit the Jagdish Temple, the largest temple in Udaipur. This Hindu temple is located in the heart of the city and we have passed it every day since we arrived, each time intending to look round and for various reasons not doing so. Situated 150m north of the Bara Pol entrance to the City Palace, this spectacular example of Indo-Aryan architecture towers over its surroundings. Built in 1651 by Maharana Jagat Singh who ruled Udaipur from 1628-53 the temple is dedicated to Lord Vishnu in his incarnation as Jagannath. The three-storey building is approached by a monumental staircase with two huge stone elephants sitting either side of the entrance. There is a service in progress when we arrive and the temple is so crowded that it is impossible to enter, but we stand at the portico with the over-spill of worshippers to listen to the chanting and to steal a glimpse into the interior.

The spire of the main temple is 79 feet high and dominates the skyline of Udaipur. This spire along with the rest of the exterior is festooned with sumptuous sculptures of dancers, elephants, horsemen, musicians and erotic poses from the karma sutra. As with all religious buildings, shoes have to be taken off on entering the temple precinct and we hop from one piece of shade to another to save our feet from the uncomfortable heat of the marble floor.

Jagdish Temple, saucy freize

After lunch we have just about enough time to take a half-an-hour boat ride on the lake. It is something we should have done when we had more time because it only from the water that it is possible to appreciate the real beauty of this city with its magnificent waterfront buildings and variety of ghats.

Boys having fun

And we don’t have time to stop and explore the small palace on Jagmandir Island with its eight life-size elephants standing guard.

Palace on Jagmandir Island

 Built by Marharaja Karan Singh in 1620 it is said that Shah Jahan derived ideas for aspects of the Taj Mahal when he stayed here in 1623-24. But time is running on and we have to get back to pick up our luggage, pay our bill and get to the train station. It’s not until we are on our way to the station that we realise that we have miscalculated and our train leaves 40 minutes later than we thought; we could have visited Jagmandir after all! Ah well…

Girl in festive costume

At the railway station we are immediately approached by a porter who collects up our luggage on his large trolley, hurries away to check the platform and deposits us and our luggage in exactly the right spot for boarding our carriage. It is 5.15 pm and the train is already in the station even though it is not due to depart until 6.30 pm. The doors are locked and boarding isn’t until 6 o’clock so we settle down on our rucksacks. While we wait a brazen stray dog sneaks up and before we know it has cocked a leg and watered our luggage! Fortunately, only the leather luggage is affected and we have some tissues and water with us so we are able to clean them up without any ill effects or unpleasant, lingering smells.

Waiting for the train

We arrive in Bundi around 11pm, only 15 minutes late which is good by Indian standards. By which time   everyone else has long since retired to bed and the carriage is in complete darkness.

The bridge

We have begun to have serious problems with the Dell we bought in Thailand. My Asus hasn’t worked for a long time now - it crashed and never recovered – and the Dell has become the surrogate for blogging (to Andy’s mild displeasure since I tend to hog it for long periods). It seems to have developed a virus which probably infiltrated it when Andy removed the anti-virus software in an attempt to log onto the  recalcitrant wireless internet in Jaisalmer. The virus has also infected my USB pen and seems to reside in my blog folder which is no longer accessible. Fortunately I had posted all the blogs stored there before it corrupted. But the upshot of the whole affair is that whilst I can still write to the pen I can’t upload to the internet for fear of infecting other computers. So I have had to resort to writing my blog ‘live’ as it were – just as well the internet is so cheap here.

View across Lake Pichola

The views of the Lake Pichola and the Lake Palace are much better from the west side of the lake which is reached by a rather nice bridge accessed through an archway close to our guest house. Looking back over the lake reveals what makes this such a picturesque city, with its impressive architecture and the long line of ghats descending to the water. The west side has fewer and less impressive buildings, although it has its fair share of ghats which provide washing and bathing facilities for its residents. It’s quieter too, with far fewer shops and less buzz. On our return the mahout we saw a few days ago is feeding his elephant grass on the edge of the lake.

Lake Palace

Talking to the disabled man

Crossing back over the bridge we are stopped by a disabled man. It turns out that he lost his legs in a lorry accident and there being no social welfare support in India is reduced to supporting his wife and family by begging. He wants me to write a note for him in English explaining his plight and urging people to give him money and he shares his family photos with us and a picture of himself before he lost his limbs. On reflection I’m not sure why he needed the note in English since he spoke English very well, perhaps to complement the notes he had in other languages.

In India, children frequently approach us for pens, even those dressed in school uniforms and clearly from well-to-do families who already have pens of their own. We haven’t been able to work out why pens are such a desirable commodity – possibly it is because they are not a commodity at all in India and are expensive to come by? Certainly had we known, we would have brought a stash with us.

I bought a pair of gorgeously silky harem pants the other day and can’t find a suitable kurtah to match. So I’ve ordered a tailor-made top in a burnt orange silk/cotton mix from one of the many little tailor shops that are to be found in the narrow streets. It will be ready tomorrow for a mere £2.50. But will it fit?

After a long afternoon siesta  to catch up on a very poor night’s sleep we finally pay a visit to an art shop which we have passed several times and always promised the shopkeeper we would pop in to look at his hand-painted postcards. As far as we can tell, these postcards are unique to Udaipur, at least we haven’t seen them anywhere else. Old used postcards with beautifully scripted original messages and franked postage stamps are used by local artists as the backdrop to beautifully crafted miniature painting of gods such as Ganesh, Laxshmi, portraits of men in stylish turbans and musicians playing a host of traditional instruments. At 50 rupees (about 60p) they are a momento not to be missed and we select quite a collection. The shopkeeper turns out to be quite chatty – who isn’t here – and we sit and listen to his plans for developing the shop, his marketing ploys to draw in customers and his forays on the stock market. And this a man who, it transpires, cannot read and write.

Architecture

Today we walk back to the local market to find a spice box and some spices. A round, metal spice box holds a number of small dishes in which are kept the seven primary spices used in all Indian cooking: salt, coriander, garam masala, anis, cumin seed, turmeric and chilli. A must have, since we have taken our cookery course and another bargain at £2.50! In fact if we only had more space in our luggage we could equip a kitchen India-style for around £20 at most. We are not quite so savvy in our negotiations for the spices and probably made the very helpful and charming stallholder’s day when we trundle away with a bagful of over-priced purchases.

We stroll through the market which is a mix of handcarts-cum-stalls, open-fronted shops and produce displayed on the ground. As well as the vegetable and spice stalls there are carts selling blocks, of what turns out to be sugar, attracting enormous numbers of bees. In one busy corner of the market, we are stopped by a group of children eager to have their photos taken and we fall easily into the trap as one after another, singly and in groups we take pictures of them in various combinations with their young mothers. I’m even handed a small baby for a photo and when I come to hand it back the mother seems disturbingly keen for me to keep it. There is lots of giggling and laughter as everyone cranes to see themselves on the screen, even Grandma sitting on the floor with their meagre array of vegetables gets to take a look. Before we know it we are agreeing to send prints to these little urchins and I am taken to another stall where there is someone who can write out the address for me.

In the afternoon we visit the 18^th century Bagore-ki-Haveli which stands on Gangori Ghat overlooking Pichola Lake and is only a short walk from our guest house. It was built by Amir Chand Badwa the chief minister of the Mewar Royal court. In 1878 it became the home of the Maharana Shakti Singh of Bagore and was home of the royal family up to the 1930s. It was later left empty for 50 years until it was handed over to the West Zone Cultural Centre in 1986. The WZCC have since renovated the haveli in its original architectural style and it now houses a museum. Beautifully restored, it reputedly has 138 rooms of which only a handful which surrounding a central courtyard are open to the public. As we walk through the outer courtyard a very old man, sitting cross-legged and dressed in white and a brightly coloured turban strikes up an evocative tune on his Ravanhasta – a ubiquitous stringed instrument which is made of from a coconut shell and bamboo and is played with a horsehair bow. If anything embodies Rajasthan then this man is it.

Musician

Surprisingly the Haveli is deserted and we have the place to ourselves. This is a wonderfully serene setting in which a several rooms have been furnished to recreate what they may have been like when inhabited, whilst others display photographs of iconic places across India, cultural items including a large range of turbans of different styles (who would have thought there could be so many ways to tie them!) and a rather incongruous basement art gallery displaying modern and traditional art.

It is also provides a fabulous outdoor venue for an excellent evening cultural performance of traditional Rajasthani dance and puppetry. Local dancers wearing gloriously colourful traditional costume perform a series of dances. The performance included the popular Ghoomar dance in which the dancers’ graceful twirling is enhanced by the swirl of their vibrant ghagra skirts; the Terah Talli which consists of two women sitting on the floor with thirteen cymbals tied to various parts of their body which they strike with ones held in their hands; and the stunning finale, the Bhavai dance in which nine large brass pitchers of decreasing size are balanced on the dancer’s head whilst she performs a series of increasingly difficult dance moves including walking on nails and broken glass!

Traditional dance

Dance with symbols

We stop at a tiny perfumery which is just about big enough for the two of us and the shop keeper and sit down to test a whole range of oil-based scents.  Mr Asgar Ali smothers us with  pachoili, jasmine, amber, roe, cobra, sunflower, musk until all the smells meld together and we emerge smelling like a perfume counter.   But not before buying two small bottles of scent;  one musk and the other sandalwood for a mere 160 rupees and learning the Indian trick of putting a small piece of cotton wool soaked in perfume between the cartilage of the ear.  It prolongs the scent and disguises its source.

This afternoon we are signed up for a three-hour cookery course in a village house on the outskirts of town.  The transport turns out to be three up on a motorbike which is definitely a no go as far as I’m concerned.  So we insist on a auto rickshaw and it’s just as well we did, because it turns out to be a long ride over some pretty rough roads.  Our teacher, Veejay Singh is the brother of the rickshaw driver (why aren’t we surprised) as well as of the man who runs the shop where we booked the course and bought some clothes.  We have already picked the dishes we are going to learn to prepare and which will be our dinner today:  chapati, plain paratha, stuffed paratha, masala chai, Indian-style coffee;  pakora, vegetable kofta, mutter paneer, dum aloo and halvi for desert.  The lesson takes place on the floor of Veejay’s hall, sitting on mats in front of a two-ring gas stove.  All the cooking and preparation is done with minimum of equipment using two wok-style bowls and a curry spoon, a teaspoon, a small, circular chapati board and roller, a measuring cup and a bucket of water and most important a spice box containing the seven essential spices used to create all Indian dishes:  anis, chilli, cumin seed, coriander, salt, tumeric and garam masala.

Veejay has a cut 17-month old daughter who is shy and curious by turns, wanting to be close to her father, but inevitably getting in the way.  Mother has to be called to keep the child out of mischief and grandma is on hand to scold gently as necessary.  But what is striking about this household is the quiet calmness that pervades it;  unhurried and peaceful.

Veejay demonstrates while we watch, take notes and eat the delicious food he prepares, making it look much eaiser than I suspect I’m going to find it when I come to try to replicate the recipes in my own kitchen.

As we waited

We have been invited by Ragu who runs the Nukkad to join tonight’s family celebrations  in honour of Ganesh’s forth-coming birthday on 23rd August.  They are hosting a meal in the courtyard of a local school where Raju’s brother is headmaster (family connections are underpin everything in India).  A few other people staying at the guest house have also been invited and we are taken to the school on foot (in a crocodile formation appropriately).  500 people have been invited and because of the numbers the meal is served in shifts with people arriving and leaving throughout the evening.  As soon as we arrive we are seated cross-legged on one of several long mats laid out on the floor and a thali-style meal is served from stainless steel buckets and trays.  We have two curry sauces, rice, a cakey kind of bread and a very sweet desert, all eaten without cutlery which is quite a challenge particularly when the curries are mostly liquid. 

We get chatting to a French couple who have also been invited and who have recently arrived in Udaipur from Kerala in the south.  As the celebration winds down we all four go in search of a bar and spend a pleasant evening over a beer or three.

The City Palace, the larges in Ragasthan, was begun by Mharaja Udai Singh II the founder of Udaipur, in 1600 and subsqueantly added to by various Maharajas over the centuries.   It’s impressiveness lies in its size rather than its beauty;  neither the exterior or the interior are a patch on other palaces we’ve visited here, such as those in Jaisalmer or Amber.  Highlights are the Mor Chowk with its five delicate glass mosaic peacocks;  the Manak Mahal (Ruby Room) its glass and mirror work having long since lost its lustre;  The Bari Mahal has a lovely, peaceful central garden and an indoor fountain;  Moti Mahal with its fading mirrow- work and Chini Mahal decorated with ornamenal blue delph tiles and Belgian glass.

After lunch we wander into the loca bazaar around the clock tower for a flavour of the real Uaipur, which is not so different from the tourist bazaar about 500 metres away, except for a few less handicraft shops.  A large elephant with mahout is ‘parked’ at ight angles to the pavement taking up at least 50% of the available road space.  It’s head and ears are colourfully painted and we are able to get right up close;  close enough to touch the rough leathery hide.

Today Andy as aged another ten years;  according to the guest house owner he looks about 76!

Our guest house’s roof-top restaurant is a good vantage point from which to view the lake and palace as well as the coming and goings on Gangaur Ghat below.  The ghat is a popular bathing and clothes washing spot and young boys frolic in its murky waters while sari-clad women squat on the steps to scrub dhobi.  When we turn up for breakfast this morning, though, the resaurant is empty and there is no sign of any staff.  So we wander round the coner and stumble on the Nukkad Guest House, which like many in Udipur also has a roof top restaurant.  At first glance it has a rather unprepossessing entrance and we are in two minds whether to try it.  But once inside a rather beautiful haveli is revealed with a central atrium and rooms set out around three galleried floors with wrought iron ballustrades.  We have a pleasant breakfast on the light and airy terrace.

Udaipur old town is a bustling centre of small shops, their wares spilling onto the street and hanging from their facades.  There is a mass of things aimed pimarily at the tourists – from the minature paintings for which the town is famed (so-called for the fineness o their detail, rather than their size), to antique jewellery, leather bound notebooks and lots of handicrafts.  Painted woodenf igures and traditional puppets are to be seen at every turn.  There are a few cars and the narrow streets are easily clogged particularly when the yellow school buses ar about.  But generally it is easy to get around and every where of interest is can be reached on foot.

Cows decorated with brown splodges over their bodies, red on their faces and a saffron cloth tied to one of their horns to mark today’s cow festival, wander the streets.  This is the third festival in almost as many days, coming hot on the heels of Krishna’s birthday, Independence Day and Friendship Day.  On the 23rd it’s Ganesha’s birthday and preparations are underway for another major celebration!

Our attempt to change some travellers cheques is complicated by the rather sorry state of one of the cheques.  12 months in Andy’s body belt has taken its toll and the cheque is looking a bit dog-earred.  We present the cheques at a money changers, agree a rate and sign them;  so far so good.  It is only then that themoney changer  scrutinises the cheques and decides he doesn’t want to take the $100 cheque with a small tear.  Would we wait half-an-hour for his boss to come and decide whether it can be accepted?  We decide not to wait, but after a couple of paces down the street we realise that no-one else will accept already signed cheques and so we have no option but to return.  In the end, after pointing out that he should have examined the cheques before telling us to sign them, the money changer accepts his mistake, the cheques are cashed and we avoid having to report one lost in oder to get our money.

There is both a temple and a mosque close to the guest house;  one performs a loud, rhythmic and monotonous incantatation with drums and cymbals in the early evening and the other a call to prayer at 5am in the morning.  Great if you want an early moning wake up call.

Andy is ageing rapidly;  today a man we stop to talk to in the street thinks he is 66!  All this travelling must be taking its toll!

Beyond Ranakpur we pick up one of the few dual carriageways in Rajasthan and what a bizarre experience that is.  Before long, we meet a tractor coming in the opposite direction on the wrong side of the road, soon followed by another  and further on several cars.  It’s not until much later that we discover that part of the road is still being hewn through the hillside and on-coming drivers for some inexplicable reason are diverting onto the left-hand carriageway even though the right-hand carriageway is open!  As we travel along we come across cattle being herded down the road while some cows are sitting in the fast lane or on the central reservation.  There are even one or two people walking in the fast lane.  Rock falls encroach onto the road on either side some so sever that they block half the road.

Since we reached the hills the weather has become cloudy and much cooler which comes as a welcome relief after the intense heat of the last few days.  We arrive in Udaipur in the late afternoon.  The hotel we are booked into – The Old Jheel Guest House – was recommended to us by Jora, the manager at Shahi Palace in Jaisalmer.  It turns out to be in two buildings across a narrow street;  one on the laike side and the other set back.  We are expecting to be on the lake but are shown a room at the top of the second building which involves a climb up steep stone stairs not much more than shoulder width wide.  After climbing four flights we emerge at the top of the building where there is one large room and a facing roof terrace with excellent views over the lake.

Today, it turns out is a very auspicious day;  apart from it being Indian Independence day (and the start of the football season) the family are holding a welcome ceremony for a recent new addition and we are invited to attend.  The celebrations include a buffet meal at the roof-top restaurant of a local hotel followed by the ceremony back at the haveli.  Our host, Suvendra, has organised for us to hire some Indian clothes for the evening – a salewar kameez for me and a kirtah and trousers for Andy – and has lent me an armful of bangles.  It turns out to be a very sedate and subdued affair;  quite different from the ‘party’ atmosphere Suvendra had described with singing and dancing, water is the only drink available and we find the other guests are more interested in staring at us than talking to us.    We are not introduced to anyone and nothing is explained.  It crosses our mind that perhaps our invitations were partly motivated by a desire to be able to close the guest house for the evening.  Fortunately a young French couple have also been invited,  so we are at least able to take refuge in each other’s company.

The baby’s welcome ceremony back at the haveli is a very low-key affair and something of a mystery to us as onlookers.  All the ladies sit around on mats on the floor of the terrace while the men sit inside.   The ceremony involves the giving of many presents for the baby – which is tiny, rather under-nourished-looking little thing with a shock of thick black hair and a body that doesn’t fit his skin – and anointing the heads of the new mother, maternal grandmother and grandfather and the new father.  The dictates of tradition have meant that the new mother has spent the last two months at her mother’s house separated from her husband, and so the ceremony is also linked to the return of the mother to the marital bed which has been beautifully bedecked with fragrant flowers in the shape of an enormous heart.  The ceremony is interesting but not entertaining, it’s also very protracted so that it’s 2 am before people start to leave and we feel are able to go to bed.

Old fashioned barbers shops, usually open to the street, with traditional chairs and giving wet shaves with cut-throat razors are a common sight in India and we step inside one just by the Old City gate so that Andy can get a hair cut.  We are led into the back and Andy gets a number 2, not with an electric razer – that would be far too easy – but with scissors and a comb.  The cut is followed by a vigorous Indian head massage which involves slapping and pummelling the head and scalp and extends to pulling out the arms and stretching and cracking the fingers much to Andy’s astonishment and pain!  The massage is followed by a dusting down and the tidying of the neck hairline with a cut-throat razor.  All for a mere 50 rupees (64p)!

The drains around the fort which we pass on our way to and from the centre of town are the most putrid and foul-smelling we have come across in India and that is saying something.  It’s such a strong and over-powering stench that it is enough to make you gag.  But it’s only in this one street and despite the open drains everywhere the smell of them all seems to be concentrated inexpicably in this one spot.

The fabulous Junagarh fort is the only one in Rajasthan not to be built on raised ground.  The foundation stone was laid in 1589 by Raja Raisingh Ji, the sixth ruler of the Rathore dynasty of Bikaner and has never been breached.  It’s imposing crenulated walls lean inwards and are defended by 37 bastions.  But it is the interiors more than the exterior that give this fortress the wow factor.  They are among the most lavish and elaborate we have seen.  We take an audio guide rather than one of the many Indian guides available that way we can wander around at our own pace.  It turns out to be a good move for another reason as well;  the stewards are happy to open up several of the areas of the palace buildings normally closed to the public and we are surreptitiously led into some of the unrestored rooms for a few extra rupees. 

After having a tasty lunch in a simple cafe open to the street and with the kitchen in full view we pick up a rickshaw driver to take us round the Old City.  He won’t give us a price but simply says ‘as you like’;  a disconcerting phrase we have heard several times before and which infers you have the choice to pay what you like and implies that whatever you pay will be more than they could have earned ferrying a local around.  There are some beautiful old havelis in maze of narrow streets that make the Old City most of them shuttered and looking rather run down but probably still inhabited, although it is difficult to tell.  One turns out to be the ‘backside’ (a common, and to us rather comical, Indian way of describing the rear) of a very upmarket hotel.   We weave through the throng of animals, camel carts, tut-tuts and people that crowd the bazaar with its shops opening directly over the open drains and onto the street passing along the way handcarts selling all manner of dried food stuffs, including, incredible one piled high with loose crisps!  Eventually we arrive at the Bhadasar Jain Temple dating from 15th century;  a particularly beautiful with a huge dome decorated with delicate and vibrantly painted murals and an internal rectangular tower rising up through the building carved with voluptuous painted figures.    We attempt to enter the nearby Laxminath Temple to be halted by shouts calling us back;  it is closed to tourists at this time of day and we have to content ourselves with a circuit of the exterior and a picture of what must be at least a hundred pigeons feasting on the offerings of grain left outside.

Our rickshaw driver drops us outside our hotel and we profer  100 rupees;  a generous amount given that the manager of our hotel , we’ve discovered, only earns 25 rupees an hour.  But the rickshaw driver isn’t having any of it;  he want 150.  It’s so small an amount of money it’s not worth the effort to argue, but so much for paying ‘as you like’!

The hotel has a very good restaurant on the roof top with probably the best views of this surprisingly green desert city.  It is very unlike Jaisalmer in that respect with trees seeming to provide an extensive canopy across its low-rise topography.  Bikaner is also very different architecturally, gone are the golden tones of Jaisalmer’s carved sandstone, here boxy rendered houses painted in a variety of muted colours are predominant outside the old walled city.

The Hotel Harisar Haveli has been recommended to us by Jora, the manager at the Shahi Palace in Jaisalmer and turns out to be a very large haveli-style complex of buildings with neat, clean and spacious rooms.  For India, it is well maintained and well decorated;  the ceilings of all the shared balconies have been painted with colourful murals and there is a pleasant ground floor tented courtyard where food is served.  Curiously there is a rusting Ford Prefect and what looks like a 19^th century British hansom carriage parked on the forecourt both of which would benefit from sympathetic restoration.  Unusually the manager is not interested going through the tedious and bureaucratic registration process that must create mountains of paperwork for both the hotels and the local police who collate all the information that’s collected. 

After packing up camp we ride the camels to a small village where the rains have filled a small waterhole.  It’s here that the rest of our party are being picked up for the return to Jaisalmer whilst we are being joined by another group for the rest of the day.  As we wait for the jeep to arrive we watch the comings and goings around the small oasis;  village women in their vividly coloured saris arrive in groups to collect water in metal urns almost too heavy to lift but which they carry on their heads with effortless grace.  Children from the local school have heard we are here and come in shy groups to say hello and ask for pens and empty water bottles.  One boy has been given a half-full bottle of mineral water by one of the group and immediately proceeds to empty this precious liquid on the ground.  It turns out that the villagers would rather re-fill the bottles from the murky waters of the pool that camels drink from and people bathe in rather than drink mineral water that has come into contact with the lips of someone else!  In India no-one puts the neck of a bottle to their lips, instead they pour the water into their mouths or drink from a cupped hand.  Only foreigners taint the water by drinking directly from the bottle making it dirtier, as far as Indians are concerned, than water from a muddy pool.

A water tanker is brought down to the pool to siphon off the water to fill the cisterns of the houses in the village.  All the water will taken away and stored otherwise it will become too brackish to drink.  Unbelievably, to us, the villagers drink this water without treating it in any way and we see several people come to the pool to drink.  There are startling contrasts in India – on the one hand people drink untreated water and live with unwholesome open drains and yet there is widespread mobile phone usage and network coverage far more extensive than in Australia. 

Today the camels aren’t tied together and mine is way out front.  I’ve got the hang controlling it’s direction;  a gentle tug on the reins to left or right does the trick.  But I have no idea how to stop it!  Apparently, I learn later, pulling its head back so it can’t see where it’s going brings it to a halt.  Fortunately they are placid, well-mannered beasts and walk at a gentle, but steady pace.  My camel is the mother of a baby which has accompanied the safari tagging along usually just behind or alongside me all the way. 

The temperature seems to have soared today and there is less breeze.  When we stop for lunch our camel drivers are in no hurry to move on preferring to wait for the heat to abate.  We are with a good bunch of people today;  a young Dutch couple, and English guy from a village somewhere between Ilkley and Skipton, and another couple who are possibly Dutch as well.  It’s 4.30 before we pack up and move on;  we’ve spent most of the afternoon chatting and very little of the day on a camel!  Half –an-hour’s ride further on we meet our jeep pick-up and say our goodbyes to the rest of the group who are heading to the dunes for their night under the stars.  The road back to Jaisalmer about 30 kms away is in good condition but very uneven and consequently it’s a bumpy ride.  It also narrow, which means pulling over whenever we meet anything coming the other way.  We arrive back, hot, sweaty and uncomfortably sandy.

Our first task on returning to Jaisalmer is to book a taxi to take us to Bikaner tomorrow.  We got a price from a taxi stand a couple of days ago which was half what was being quoted elsewhere.  But when we go back to book this evening the price starts at 2,500 rupees and then suddenly and inexplicably increases to 3,500.  Annoyed by the blatant attempt to over-charge us we walk away and are immediately surrounded by taxi drivers wanting to offer us a better price – it’s amazing the impact of walking away can have – and we settle on a price of 2,800. 

We say our goodbyes to some of the people we have met during our stay in Jaisalmer and spend our last night having dinner on a roof-top restaurant in the fort that has far-reaching views out over the desert. 

A short drive further on and we meet up with the camels and their drivers.  We are on a non-touristic safari which means avoiding the well-trodden routes and other groups.  It transpires that it also means not visiting anything very interesting in the way of villages or monuments and sticking to the scrubby desert.  We ride the camels for about an hour before stopping for lunch in the shade of a tree.  We rest and chat whilst the drivers prepare a meal of vegetable curry and chapatis all prepared and cooked over an open fire.  We stop for a couple of hours during the heat of the day, water the camels and relax.  There is something rather majestic about the camel with its haughty and inscrutable expression and its stoical manner.  They are seriously uncomfortable to ride being particularly hard on the buttocks and hamstrings.  But I’ve discovered that it is much more comfortable to sit with one leg bent so that the foot rests on the camel’s neck or a bag hanging from the saddle.  All the camels are strung together and I’m at the back although my camel wants to be up at the front which means my leg is continually being trapped against the camel in front. 

The Great Thar Desert is flat , sandy and surprisingly green, with a few trees, bushes and a green, weed-like covering.  Despite the aridity of the area, the villagers grow a kind of red berry that is used medicinally and herd sheep and goats.  We also catch a glimpse of a desert fox and deer.  After another couple of hours riding we camp for the night on the sand dunes that cover a relatively small area of the Thar Desert around Sam and Khuri.  The sand is silky soft and golden blown into geometric crescents with steep leeward cliffs and rippled windward slops.  But even here there is some vegetation growing.  There are also numerous dung beetles scurrying around or buzzing overhead.  When not busy rolling balls of dung they are either fighting to defend their prize possession or burying it.  Fortunately they don’t seem interested in us and never encroach on our mats.  The camel drivers prepare another freshly-made vegetable curry and chappatis and ply us with sweet chai and fruit while we wait for dinner to be served.  The sunset is disappointingly unspectacular;’  in fact we haven’t seen a decent sunset since we arrived in India.  But the night sky is wonderfully clear and bursting with stars. 

Dinner is served in the pitch dark and I have to tie a torch to my head so that we can see what we’re eating.  After dinner our Japanese companion takes a walk over the dunes to answer a call of nature and doesn’t return.  It’s not until one of the drivers hears his calls for help that anyone realises he’s wandered far away from the camp, become hopelessly disorientated and lost his way.

By 9.30 pm we are all settled down for a night under the stars on thin mattresses, a rolled blanket for a pillow and heavy eiderdowns for when it turns chilly.  Later we are woken by the hobbled camels shuffling passed inches from where we lay.  By this time the waning moon has risen and the landscape is bathed in a bright silvery light. 

Shopping is a pleasant, sociable affair.  Business is generally done over a cup of chai and once the shopkeeper has determined what you might be interested in, or even not interested in, it doesn’t seem to matter, an array of items will be brought down from the shelves and paraded before you in a variety of sizes and colours until the floor is stewn with numerous samples of scarves, tablecloths, shawls, bedspreads or whatever.  It takes a certain measure of determination to walk out without buying because the shopkeepers are a very tenacious breed and will cajole and negotiate  in an effort to arrive at a mutually acceptable price even as you walk down the street.

Side stepping the cows can be a little tricky too as a single cow can obstruct the narrow laneways leaving little room to squeeze by and whilst we are now quite used to walking alongside them in the street, pushing them out of the way needs a little more courage particularly in the face of their horns.  Fotunately, there is usually someone coming in the opposite direction to give them a hefty slap on the backside which invariably shifts the beasts.

We have dinner on the roof terrace of the hotel and not for the first time we admire the magical view of the fort lit up against the night sky.  From here we can see the complete sweep of one side of the fort with its ramparts, bastions and old havelis bathed in a warm glow.  The night-time view is quite special;  made even more so when the full moon rises from behind it.

In the evening we visit the Desert Culture Centre and Museum for a traditional puppet show.  We arrive 30 minutes early, which gives us the opportunity to wander round the small museum which is the personal collection of the elderly man who introduces himself at the door.  The displays are a bit moth-eaten and dusty, but there are extensive explanations in Engish.  The audience for the performance consists of us and four other pepole and we are treated to a series of puppet dances accompanied by three musicians one of which is an absolutely brilliant and and rather theatrical player of a pair of precussion instruments very similar to Spanish castanets.  The show though doesn’t quite live up to expectations and is certainly not as good as the short taster we had during our visit to the fort above Amber.

After lunch we visit the Saleem-ki-Haveli.   The third of the major havelis in Jaisalmer is most impressive from the ouside with an elaborately carved exterior and a cantilevered top floor.  The plain and unrenovated interiors are made up for by a thoroughly informative tour conduced by the current owner.  The low doorways served a number of puposes:  to force visitors to bow as a display of respect;  to keep the rooms cool and;  to limit entry to one person at a time making defence easier when under attack.  The steep steps which are a common feature of all old buildings in Rajasthan were designed to make attack more difficult and steps of uneven depth made mounting stairs more hazardous for attackers  Deep spaces between the ceilings and floors allowed noise of intruders to alert the sleeping inhabitants.  No cement was used in the construction (although its use is widespread in the renovation of many of the buildings in Jaisalmer unfortunately and the cack-handed application of grey mortar pointing on golden sandstone is a travesty).  Instead a combination of metal pins and interlocking masonary held the structures together.  Some of the carved stone flowers on the exterior can be unscrewed for use as decoration at festivals, ingenious in a land where flowers are in short supply.  Inevitably, there is a shop at the end of the tour, but on this occasion selling very good replica artifacts at reasonable prices, so we buy a scorpion padlock which, as with most pieces, as a number of additional uses including as a hook and a door knocker.

We are getting known around the bazaar and fort and people seem to keep track of our comings and goings noting where we shop and expecting us to patronise their shop as well.  Invitations to take chai from people with whom we’ve done business or simply browsed their shop are increasing which makes walking down the street a sociable, if time-consuming business.

A rickshaw driver who we spoke to when we were in the fort a couple of days ago, has spotted us at the temples and is eager to take us round the captivating havelis for which Jaisalmer is justly famed.  Implicit in such a tour, of course, is the opportunity for him to earn some commission along the way.  He hangs around while we visit the temples and is patiently waiting for us when we finally emerge.  The havelis are on our agenda and he offers to take us for 100 rupees which will incude a visit to a textile outlet and his boss’ artifacts emporium, which sounds as though it could be quite interesting.  We are expecting to see the three foremost havelis in Jaisalmer, but in fact only get to two, the Nathmal-ki-Haveli and built in he late 19th entury and a former prime minister’s house and the Patwon-ki-Haveli which was built between 1800 and 1860 by five Jain brothers.  In the first we immediately get shunted into a souvenir shop and receive a cursory explanation of the architectural features before being badgered to make a purchase.  Disappointingly the current owners seem far more interested in running a commercial enterpise to fund the restoration than showing visitors the building.  Such a a shame.   Before we know it we are back on the street having resisted the tempation to puchase any of the over-priced artifacts and having seen precious little of the interior.

The Patwon-ki-Haveli is a very different affair.  Its interiors have been lavishly and lovingly restored to their former glory and furnished with some interesting period pieces.  We shake off a guide who surreptitiously attaches himself to us unannounced and wander around the building soaking up the wonderful atmosphere.

The exteriors of both buildings are fine examples of haveli architecture their stepped facades resplendent with intricate carving, delicate jalis, cantilevered balconies and fabulous oriel windows overhanging the narrow alleyways below.  And the amazing thing is, that this style of architecture is to be seen everywhere in the old part of Jaisalmer.

We emerge from one of the havelis to find a cow with its head in the ricksaw attempting to eat the wiring.  Bits of wire lie discarded on the floor and the headlights are no longer working.  An everyday hazard for a rickshaw driver, we wonder?

In between visits to the havelis we make an impromptu stop at the rickshaw driver’s home and are invited in to meet his wife and one-year-old son over a cup of chai.  He lives in a narrow house arranged over several floors which he shares with his brother’s family and we are given a tour of the whole house including the ‘mandi’ shower and toilet, the kitchen and the roof terrace.  The house is simple, yet well-equipped with two televisions and surprisingly a washing machine;  even the middle class family we stayed with in Delhi didn’t have one of those.  The water supply problem is graphically brought home by the numerous large urns of water that contain the household supply for the day.

After lunch at the Shanti Fusion restauant in the fort we pay a visit to a texile coperative which is housed a a 300-year-old haveli.  The opportunity to view the interior of the building is worth patiently enduring the unfurling of bedspreads shawls, tablecloths and the like and after a short stop and a cup of chai we make our excuses and leave.  Our final stop is an ‘antiques’ warehouse in another old haveli.  It is an Aladin’s cave of supposedly original artifacts and collectibles froma six -key padlock to painted window frames, carved statuettes, to traditional fabric fans, Engllish glass medicine bottles, from opium jars and jewellery to daggers and much, much more besides.  It’s tempting to buy something, but what?  The choice is bewilderingly vast.  In the end we come away with nothing.

We return to collect the altered kurtah which now fits perfectly and are subject to some friendly banter and a half-serious attempt to sell us more clothes.  Surely we would like a turban?  so easy to tie from an enormous length of cloth.  At which point we get a demonstration of how simple it is to assemble.  Doesn’t it look magnificent on Andy?  What a wonderful present for someone back home!  We resist the temptation and come away with nothing more than a couple of photos leaving amidst laughter and smiles.

We are getting used to the fact that the ATMs and the electricity work sporadically, and we have a hunt on today to find an ATM that is working as our cash is running low.  There are three ATMs in Jaisalmer and the first, in Ghandi Chowk, is down.  We eventually find a working ATM a bit further out of the centre with a queue of people out of the door.   Indians think nothing of queue jumping particularly where foreigners are concerned and so it’s necessary to stand up close to the person in front if you don’t want to lose your place.  Eventually with cash in our pocket we go in search of somewhere to have lunch and come upon Shanti Restaurant, a small place on the fort wall with a fabulous view out over the desert.  We are just preparing to order when our friend of yesterday, Desert, appears to greet us.  Word has reached him that we are close by his shop and he has come for no other reason than to say hello.

Later as we are browsing a shop a man invites us to look round his 800-year-old haveli.  The house has been in his family for 10 generations and is in need of serious and no doubt very expensive, restoration.  He is attempting to raise money to fund the work from donations and by selling artifacts (most probably reproductions, although it is hard to tell).  The tour is a fascinating insight into some o the architectural features:  a pair of horses heads either side of the door lintel symbolise power and strength;  a carving of Ganesh over the centre of the doorway, good luck.   Door frames are low for a number of reasons:  so that those entering must bow as a sign of respect;  to keep the room cool;  to restrict entry in times of attack and make defence easier. 

Historically, water has always been a scarce resource within the city and every drop of water was collected and recycled four times:  the same water being used for showering, washing laundry, for cleaning and watering plants, for instance.  Even today tap water in the fort is available for only half-an-hour each day (and some days not at all) so people living here must draw as much water as they need for a day or two during that half-an-hour and keep it stored in urns.  It rather brings home, just how much we take for granted.

We end our meander round the ort with a drink on the roof terrace of a small hotel that is right next to the magnificent Jain temples and almost within touching distance of the impressively carved domes.  It’s not often that such a spectacular roof can be viewed at such close quarters.

But Jaisalmer’s citadel is under threat from a combination of over-crowding and poor drainage which are causing it to sink into the hill on which it stands.  There is considerable restoration work going on both in the walled city and the fort itself, much of it under the auspices of NGOs including the UK-based Jaisalmer in Jeopardy foundation.  There is also a uncharacteristic amount of new building in progress;  all in the traditional style so that it blends almost reasonably well with the old.

While the authorities attempt to grapple with a solution to the drainage problem, Lonely Planet in its smug, self-righteousness has decided not to recommend any hotels or restaurants inside the fort in its latest edition.  The corollary of this misguided stance is that visitor numbers are down, businesses are struggling and the livelihoods of the three hundred families who live in the fort are put at risk.  Meanwhile, in a staggering display of hypocrisy and double standards LP has seen fit to break its stated policy and include the up market Hotel Kila Bhawan which is built into the fort wall.  Now, why might that be, I wonder?

The Jaisalmer Fort was established in 1156 by Maharawal Jaisai on the advice of Essai, a mendicant, thereby fulfilling Lord Krishna’s prophecy that his descendants would rule here one day.  The Bhatis have ruled Jaisalmer ever since and the Maharaja Palace complex is a fine example of their architecture and art.  The fort is entered through a series of enormous gates eventually leading to a large courtyard over-looked by the elegant seven-storey sandstone palace with its fabulously carved exterior, balconies, impossibly intricate jalis and oriel windows to mention just a few of the architectural features of this stunning building.  Inside there is an excellent museum displaying numerous artefacts, fabulous views and lavishly ornamented interiors, much of it in pristine condition.

After visiting the palace we take a brief stroll around the fort stopping to browse one or two of the shops that sprinkle the narrow alleyways.  In one small square we admire some lovely Muslim bedspreads and get chatting to the shopkeeper who invites inside for a cup of Chai and to look at the interior of the restored single storey building which has been finished in the traditional style with a cow dung plaster.  We sit and talk for what must be an hour or so about families, travel, business and lots more besides.  Desert, as he likes to be called, is a genuinely nice man who no doubt hopes to sell us something in the long run but seems in no hurry to do so.

We take one of the silk Kurtahs I bought yesterday back to the shop, because it has a couple of small holes in it.  We have become best friends with the two men who run the shop and when they can’t find a replacement in the same size they volunteer to alter a larger one at no charge.  Somehow along the way they manage to sell me another hand-embroidered kurtah and there is much laughing and joking in the process.

The destination indicators are displaying yesterday evening’s departures so we have to rely on a stall holder to give us the platform number.  The usually helpful displays that hang at intervals along the length of the platform giving details of the carriage numbers, aren’t displaying information either.  Of course, this being India, the carriages aren’t in any particula order, so we end up walking up and down the very long platform with our heavy luggage, negotiating the crowds of people until we manage to locate our carriage.

We are in a sleeper coach for the journey so for the first couple of hours we catch up on some lost sleep.  It’s a long and slow journey and we seem to spend ages sitting in stations for no apparent reason.  By the time we get to Jaisalmer the train is one-and-an-half hours late and it’s taken a total of 6-and-an-half hours to travel 244 kms!  We are rescued from a throng of rather aggressive touts and rickshaw drivers that accosts us the moment we step out of the station by our hotel pick-up.  Our luggage is tossed on the roof of a jeep along with that of six Spaniards who have been recruited by the hotel’s driver and we all squeeze into the limited seat space.

Jaisalmer ‘Jewel of the Thar’ sits on the edge of the Great Thar Desert, just 100 km from the Pakistan border.  The great desert citadel known as Sonar Qila with its 99 bastions stands guard of the surrounding town rising like a giant golden sandcastle out of the sloping skirt of Trikuta Hill;  the only living fort in Rajasthan.  A small town, Jaisalmer is built almost entirely of mellow yellow sandstone;  a jumble of mostly one and two and occasionally three, storey buildings surrounded by arid desert stretching as far as the eye can see.  We are staying at the Shahi Palace just under the fort walls.  It’s a newish hotel built in a traditional style with carved sandstone embellishment, oriel windows and a lovely rooftop restaurant with a mix of cushioned and conventional seating and fabulous views of the fort to one side and the desert to the other.

Jaisalmer is a laid-back place with very little traffic, quiet and relatively clean.  It has a good vibe (or karma as they say here) and already I feel I’m going to enjoy our stay.  After lunch in the restaurant we take a rickshaw to Ghandhi Chowk for a bit of retail therapy in the bazaars that line the narrow laneways off this square, returning with some baggy pants and a couple of silk kirtahs.

Our train tomorrow is at 5.15 am, so we are moving from Singhvi’s Haveli to the Govind Hotel as it is only a few minutes’ walk from the station and means that we don’t have to get up quite so early or rely on a rickshaw to get us there.  It’s a hotel that’s good only for a night or two;  the rooms are cramped and the bathroom is little more than a cupboard.  But apart from its proximity to the station is has one other thing going for it – it’s cheap and what we save compared to Singhvi’s is equivalent to the cost of the train fares.

Indian trains are very cheap indeed, they are also incredibly slow, spend ages sitting at stations along the way, are old, not very clean and the seats are uncomfortable or at least I find them so.  Apart from that they are not so bad and are probably more comfortable than the dilapidated buses, given the chaotic traffic and the state of the roads which are unbelievably awful much of the time.

Having checked-in, we head for the Sadar Market, a bustling walled square filled with stalls frequented by locals and a clock tower at its centre.  Women in vibrant saris and men in richly colourful turbans come here to buy and sell local produce, clothes, household goods,  mend shoes and generally go about their business.  Rickshaws congregate around the arched gateway into the square, women balance pots and enormous enveloping bundles on their heads with perfet aplomb, the clamour of horns resonates all around and mopeds, weave their way in and out of the people and handcarts.  This is India encapsulated.  We have come here to swap some books at the secondhand book store which is to be found in one corner of the square according to Lonely Planet.  It turns out to be a couple of racks of books on the pavement overseen by a rather pushy young women who tries very hard to help me select a book and then wants a ridiculously inflated price for it even though I’m giving her two books in exchange, particularly when it turns out, on later inspection, to be a counterfeit copy.  But it’s too hot and too little money to stand and argue over so we hand over the 250 rupees (about 3 pounds) and make our way to a restaurant for some lunch.

We are left kicking our heels for the rest of the afternoon having seen all the main sights.  With nothing much else to do we visit the Umaid Gardens which are home to a zoo and the Sardar Government museum.  The gardens may have been lovely once upon a time, but now are sadly unkempt and in need of a competent gardener.  The museum seems to suffer from a similar lack of attention from a curator.  All the exhibits are smothered in dust and are being left to deteriorate;  the stuffed birds and tigers, in particular, look distinctly moth-eaten.  We don’t even make it inside the zoo as we are advised by an Indian passerby that it’s not worth the 10 rupees entrance fee – and for an Indian to say that, it must be bad!

We are gradually coming to appreciate that in India things never quite happen the way they should.  For one thing the trains rarely seem to run on time (or not at least in our limited experience).  The electricity is bit of a hit and miss affair and anyone who can afford it has a back-up generator to provide minimum power for lighting and fans when the supply fails, which it seems to do fairly often.  This week there is no power in Jodhpur from 9am until midday and the Singhvi’s Haveli doesn’t have a generator, so we have been showering in the dark and sweltering without a fan.  The drain in the bathroom is blocked and the shower water has formed a large puddle across most of the bathroom floor.  We complained when we first arrived but it is only when we complain again today that anything is done about it.  The ATMs are temperamental;  sometimes paying out and sometimes not, sometimes they give 10,000 rupees and sometimes only 5,000 and we can’t work out whether the problem lies with our bank or the machines.

In India too, the centuries seem to collide;  the present day with the almost medieval and anything in between.    Mobile phones, broadband internet and wifi go hand –in-hand with antiquated drainage, standpipes and handcarts.  Domesticated animals are a commonplace sight in the streets, not only cows scavenging cardboard and paper, but pigs too snuffle amongst the rubbish  whilst dogs, a cats, donkeys and  camels, horses and even the odd elephant,  all take their place alongside the ‘Japanese horse’ better known as the moped, the rickshaw and the occasional car. 

I read an interesting story in yesterday’s India Times which encapsulates the essence of India.  Three days ago there was extensive flooding in Delhi as a result of the monsoon rains which brought parts of the city to a standstill for several hours and left people stranded in the streets.  This is despite millions of rupees having recently been spent on dredging the drainage system of mud and rubbish.  Why?  Because the silt and debris that had cost so much to remove had been deposited alongside the drains so that as soon the rains came it was washed straight back from whence it came!  

The Jaswant Thada is spectacular not only for its translucent white marble that glows orange and yellow when a beam of sunlight catches it or the fabulously carved decoration, or the array of delicate hatted towers that adorn the roof, but also for the incredible 360 degree views of Jodhpur city, the fort and the arid Rajasthani countryside beyond.  This cenotaph to Maharaja Jaswant Singh II was built in 1899 on a peaceful rocky plateau just outside the city and is set in a small garden.  There is an old man playing a stringed instrument with a bow that we have seen several times before while a young boy does a whirling dervish kind of dance for a few rupees.

The impregnable Meherangarh, ‘Citadel of the Sun’, built by Roa Jodha in 1459, sits perched on huge rocky cliff casting its protective presence over this low-rise blue city.  The sheer walls trace the contours of the craggy rock in what must have been a formidable feat of construction.  The fort now houses a splendid museum run by the Maharaja of Jodhpur.  Fatehpol Gate the lower entrance to the fort is only a few minutes’ walk from the Haveli, but the climb up to the main gate, Lohapol, with its towering iron doors complete with spikes designed to prevent ramming by elephants, is steep and arduous.  There is a very good audio guide included in the entrance fee which takes us on a tour of the interconnecting courtyards and palace buildings and provides historical context  and information on the main buildings and exhibits.  There are some fabulous collections of howdahs, palanquins, cradles and an armoury with exquisitely decorated and preserved daggers, swords and guns including Akbar’s sword.  The buildings are beautiful examples of Rajput architecture with finely carved jalis (screens from behind which the women of the court could view proceedings without being seen), wonderfully carved detailing and over-hanging windows.  In the Coronation Courtyard is a lovely, carved marble throne on a long dais, used for the inauguration of the Marajahs of Jodhpur.  The Phul Mahal and the Moti Mohal are both fabulously ornate rooms, the latter plastered with crushed sea shells giving a mother of pearl sheen to the finish.

On our way out of the fort we pay a visit to the recently restored gardens with the intention of grabbing a spot of lunch at the restaurant there.  Both the garden and the restaurant are much publicised around the fort and it sounds like it could be rather nice.  There is an entry fee of 60 rupees for the garden and the restaurant is promoted on the reverse of the ticket.  We wander round the garden which is quite lovely, but we can’t find the restaurant.  When we enquire, it turns out there is no restaurant and the man on the gate gives no sign that there might be something ever so faintly ludicrous about advertising a restaurant that doesn’t exist.

Instead we have lunch at a rooftop restaurant in the old town which is owned by a Ajit Singh who has spent the last 20 years living in various parts of < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
London, including Southall and Golders Green.  Ajit very keen to get our feedback on the restaurant which he opened 18 months ago and to tell us his plans for improving it.  It’s certainly got lots of potential, but needs some finishing touches, such as cushions for the bottom-numbing iron chairs, some more awnings and perhaps some murals to make it less spartan.  He also has an arts and crafts shop on the ground floor at prices which appear to be considerably less than the emporium we patronised yesterday.  He’s seems genuinely concerned about tourists being over-charged and advises to us complain backed by threats to go to the police in an attempt to get our money back, which strikes us a bit extreme since they have not done anything illegal and we did after all agree a price we thought fair at the time.  Creeping cynicism makes us wonder whether his concern is motivated by a desire to see them go out of business.  Unfortunately you come across so many people who just want to fleece the tourist that you begin to question everyone’s motives.

The haveli is even better in the daylight – our room opens onto a large second floor terrace over-looking the narrow lanes of the walled old city nestled around the base of the magnificent and austere Meherangarh Fort.  There is an even better view of this faded blue city from the roof terrace.  Down a steep flight of stairs is a large relaxation area with cushions, chairs and a Rajasthani fabric-covered swing.  Down another set of steep stairs is the restaurant overlooking the inner courtyard and exotically furnished with cushion seating, low tables and sari curtains. 

Two young brothers run the show:  one sports a  moustache which curls upwards in the Rajasthani fashion;  the other is clean shaven and seems a bit too ‘smooth’.  In fact, he turns out to be quite a devious character.  Apparently he is going to the local bazaar where the locals shop and it would be no trouble at all to show us the way, he can even point out a place to get good quality textiles at local prices.  At this point, of course, alarm bells should have started to ring, particularly as he preceded this offer with some chat designed to persuade us to change our plans and go to the bazaars in the morning and the Fort in the afternoon when both are less crowded.  We end up at a large ‘wholesale’ emporium and are gradually sucked in to the sales process.  Nonetheless, they have some lovely stuff and we buy a couple of bedspreads and a few other pieces.  It is not until later, as we wander around the Sardar Market and the surrounding shops on our own, that we discover other places selling similar stuff much cheaper – we’ve fallen prey to the commission scammers!   Ah well, they were still a bargain even at inflated prices.  But it does leave a bad taste in the mouth when the management of the hotel is in on the act.

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Jodhpur is one of the pleasanter Indian cities.    It’s jumble of quiet narrow lanes are frequented almost exclusively by people on foot and the ubiquitous cows.  The soft blue hues that once marked the houses of the Brahmin caste give the city an attractive appearance.  The bazaars that cut through the city teem with life and colour and manic auto-rickshaw drivers who weave recklessly in and out of the pedestrians, cows and mopeds missing them by inches.  The open drains that line either side of the lanes run with waste water and the front steps of houses and tiny, open-fronted shops make bridges across to the street.  Every conceivable item and service is available here:  locksmiths, tailors, sari sellers, kitchenware, bed linen, laundries, men ironing clothes, people cooking cauldrons of food over fierce flames, silversmiths, stationers – anything and everything piled warehouse like in cramped, box-like premises.  How do they ever find anything?  The shops are straight onto the street, so it is possible to pull up on a moped, make a purchase and drive off without ever having to dismount.  The once beautiful buildings, crumbling, unkempt and ingrained with centuries of grime, still retain a certain elegance with their intricate jails (screens) carved corbels and delicate over-hanging windows.

We are rather sad to leave Pushkar;  it may be touristy, but it is an oasis of calm in the chaos that is < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
India.  No constant honking of horns, no traffic fumes, no crazy driving only the cows to side-step.  But having re-charged our batteries we are heading further west to Jodhpur.  The journey involves a taxi back to Ajmer to catch the train which takes six-and-a-quarter hours and numerous stops to cover the 244km to Jodhpur;  trains don’t travel very fast in India but at least they are cheap.  Even though it’s not an overnight train we are travelling in 3AC sleeper class which is one up from sleeper.  Seating is arranged in groups of eight, six on one side of the aisle and two on the other which convert to 8 bunks for overnight travel and no curtains – but at least there is air conditioning.  I shouldn’t think it is a pleasant overnight experience particularly if the carriage is full.  There is a distinct shortage of luggage space, but today there are only two women and a child sharing our section so we have plenty of room to spread out and can stow our luggage on the top bunk.

The little girl is about two or three and is very interested in the laptop and Andy’s game of Heroes.  The two women have taken up most of the available luggage space with several bags which it later transpires are mostly full of food.  As the journey progresses various dishes are prepared included some peeled and salted cucumber, a plateful of which is generously shared with us.

The train, as seems to be the norm, arrives about 35 minutes late, but our pick-up waiting for us on the platform.  We follow him to the rickshaw outside picking our way through the mass of people sitting or sleeping on mats on the station platform and on the concourse outside.  The rickshaw wallah is forced to take a detour to avoid a brightly lit procession of decorated horse-drawn carts parading through the street and on arrival wants 100 rupees for the fare, which by Indian standards is a expensive even for a lengthy rickshaw ride.  Besides the pickup is supposed to be free.  When we mention to the hotel manager that the rickshaw wallah wants paying it turns out that the correct fare is 30 rupees.

We are staying at the Singhvi Haveli in the old town, in what they claim is their best ‘suite’ – the Maharanis Suite.  It isn’t a suite, but it is quite stunning nonetheless with floor to ceiling murals in the traditional style and double aspect overhanging bay windows – shutters, no glass – with sills large enough to accommodate a chair.  One window affords a superb view of the Meherangarh Fort perched  on a rocky hill top 125m above us.  The haveli was gifted to the current owners’ ancestors by the Maharaja of Jaipur 400 years ago and is currently run as a hotel by two brothers, the 10^th generation of their family to live in this fabulous old Rajput building.

The temple revellers were even more raucous last night with booming music starting up around < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
10 pm and continuing well into the early hours.   Surprisingly we are still able to get to sleep despite the din emanating a few feet from our window.  We originally planned to be in Pushkar for three nights, but have decided to stay another night which involves moving rooms, the upside of which is that we will be at the back of the hotel where it is much quieter and hopefully out of earshot of the nightly festivities.

I’m feeling very lethargic today and although the medication seems to be improving my dodgy stomach problem we don’t do very much in the morning.  We have lunch at a restaurant occupying a first floor terrace overlooking the main street – an ideal place for people-gazing and just generally watching the world go by.  A young sari-clad woman squats with a bundle of cow grass on a cloth in front of her, patiently waiting for customers.  Eventually she starts to attract custom from more well-to-do Indians wanting to enhance their karma.  For she is selling grass to feed to the cows;  and to buy for grass for the cows is to gain spiritual brownie points. Once a sale has been made she takes an arm-full of grass from the small mound and carries it to a group of cows that are gathered down a small side street.  As we watch business starts to pick up and soon she is soon doing a brisk trade.

There are plenty of places in Pushkar offering camel safaris into the desert, either on the back of a camel or in a camel cart, for anything from an hour to two or more days.  It’s even possible to travel from here to other parts of Rajasthan on extended camel treks of a week or more although I should imagine that’s not for the faint-hearted.  Having already braved the back of a camel in Mongolia we decide to try a two-hour camel cart ride.   Although, as it turns, which is the more uncomfortable is a close run thing – on balance probably the cart.  The desert around Pushkar is not the sea of dunes sort;  the countryside may be dry and sandy but it is still predominantly green and peanuts are grown.   There is some quarrying of sand for the railway line that is under construction and much of our route has been churned up by lorries and is rather reminiscent of a building site.  At one point a young boy trudges behind us for a while serenading us with a scratchy and out-of-tune rendition of Frere Jacques on a stringed instrument played with a bow.  We willingly give him some money knowing that he will stop playing as soon as we do.  Further on we take a break – for our benefit or the camel’s we’re not sure – and immediately we are joined, as if from nowhere, by two old men and a young boy.  The old men both have stringed instruments and bows with bells, the latter providing an added dimension to the music as they tinkle in time to the rhythm.  After they have performed their song and we have shown our appreciation in the time honoured fashion, we invited to try the instrument ourselves and I can confirm that even Andy can make a scratchy noise on it, but getting the bells to tinkle in time requires a bit more practice. 

We continue our bone-shaking ride over ruts, potholes and generally uneven ground, passed the nascent railway embankment and several makeshift gypsy encampments where people are living in flimsy shelters made from tarpaulins and bits and pieces of cardboard, sacking and the like.  Children run out to follow the cart asking for money or chocolate, but in a half-hearted sort of way not really expecting anything;  not as tenacious as some we have come across.  We stop briefly at a street-side mobile trolley for a cup of chai – coffee in Andy’s case – where men sit around on metal benches chewing the fat.  Tea is brewed very sweet, very strong and very milky and served in expresso-sized plastic cups which are simply tossed on the floor afterwards (littering is a way of life in India, no one thinks twice about it).

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The haveli may be in a small back street way from main part of town, but it is opposite a temple and we are beginning to realise that this has its drawbacks particularly at festival time.  Festivals in < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
India seem to get into full swing at night and we are woken in the early hours by deafeningly loud music, a commotion in the street and engines revving.  We find out later that groups of revellers make a circuit of the temples with portable loudspeakers blaring out music with a total disregard for anyone trying to sleep. Apparently there is a  law that prohibits noise after 10 at night but it’s rarely enforced.  Fortunately, tonight the racket is short-lived.

We spend some time researching accommodation for our next stop, Jodhpur and settle on the Singhvi Haveli which is able to accommodate us in their best suite – the Maharani – for 1400 rupees.  So we decide to splash out as it sounds as though it could be something quite special.  We shall be sorry to leave Pushkar, though;  it has been a pleasant and relaxing place to get away from the madness that seems to be India and enjoy a more unhurried pace and relative peace and quiet. 

I’m still not feeling particularly well so we revisit the medical centre and I get a thorough grilling and a physical examination by the doctor who pronounces that I have gastritis and prescribes three lots of medication:  a probiotic, anti-acid and a moss green pill which might be an antibiotic or could be something else.  The consultation and medication costs about the same as a single prescription back in the UK.  I’m now taking five pills a day:  2 vitamin B1s (to deter mosquitos although I’m not sure how effective they are), doxyclyline anti-malaria, a probiotic and and unidentified green tab.   Hopefully I shall start to feel better soon.

We meet Mr Sharma again at 4pm, this time for a guided tour of the town and it’s temples.  Mr Shrama is a Brahmin and therefore knows a thing or two about the Hindu gods and spends a large part of the walk recounting Ganesh came by his elephant head and the story of Brahma and how there came to be 52 ghats in Pushkar.  We visit a number of temples, some of which are private and don’t permit non-Hindus to enter so we can only peer through the gateway, others are tiny hole-in-the wall shrines, some, like Brahma`s temple are more substantial, but all are dilapidated, mildewed and in need of some TLC.  There is a Jain and a Sikh temple in Pushkar but our tour doesn`t include these unfortunately, probably because Mr Sharma is mainly concerned with the Hindu side of things. 

Mr Sharma explains that the government provided 46m rupees to fund a project to dredge the lake but the money ran out before the project could be finished, which explains why the bottom of the lake is currently two distinct levels.  Mr Sharma is clearly irritated by this state of affairs which he puts down to government corruption and the siphoning off of funds into politician’s and contractor’s pockets.  Even more incomprehensible in his view is why the government should have provided money to start a bridge building project in Pushkar rather than provide funds to complete the work on the lake which in his view is far more pressing.  Mr Sharma doesn’t appear to be very enamoured of Indian politics.

At the end of the tour we are invited into his home for a cup of delicious marsala chai and to meet his wife and daughter.  This educated family live in three rundown rooms on the ground floor of their rather unprepossessing guest house and the only furniture in their main living space is a bed and two plastic chairs.  The family recently acquired an attractively patterned tortoise which one of their sons found in the woods and decided to bring home and we are invited to hold it, stroke is and generally admire it.  Their two sons and daughter have all been to college but his sons are experience difficulty finding good jobs and his daughter can`t get a place on a teacher training course because of a quota system that reserves places for low caste Hindus with lower academic achievements.  Mr Sharma is particularly put out by this because he has invested all his available income in educating his children and one of his son`s achieved the highest mark in his exams and still can`t get a government job.  Meanwhile Mr Sharma is so hard up that he had been unable to replace his worn out shoes until we paid him for yesterday`s tour.  What a crazy world we live in.

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I’ve not been feeling well for the last few days with stomach discomfort, so today we go to the local medical centre, but there is no doctor in attendance, only the pharmacist.  I shall have to wait until tomorrow.  We take a stroll round the colourful bazaars – tiny shops with goods spilling out onto the street and sun-faded clothes fluttering in the breeze, endless crewelwork and mirrored bedcovers, wall hangings, cushion covers and carved wooden trays and other such items – many familiar from ethnic shops such as Karavan where they are sold at greatly inflated prices. 

As we pass an old Haveli opposite Seventh Heaven a man calls out to us from inside;  it turns out to be someone who pressed a card into our hand when we first arrived in < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
Ajmer in the hope of persuading us to book into his hotel when we got to Pushkar.  He wants us to come in to look at the rooms and to find out why we decided to stay somewhere else.   The rooms are huge, clean but spartan and with none of the character and charm of Seventh Heaven.  Unwittingly we find ourselves drawn into a conversation with his brother about how they might improve the appeal of the hotel and after making a few suggestions about furnishings and decor and the importance of being on the internet and getting independent reviews, being in Lonely Planet etc we say our goodbyes and leave feeling slightly bemused.

At 4pm we have arranged to have a guided walk in the countryside with Mr Sharma who lives just round the corner.  It’s been raining and so the streets are squelchy with a mixture of mud and cow dung – lovely!  Mr Sharma is a charming older gentleman with heavily accented and not very fluent English and his commentary is a little difficult to follow.  Even after two week in India we are still finding the Indian accent eludes us.  Within a few minutes we are out of the town and in the green and peaceful countryside, passing through a park and then up into the hills to visit a couple of small white-washed temples;  one to Shiva which has a permanent spring with a flow that never varies and a fabulous view over Pushkar and the other to Krishna with five natural pools and where a festival is in progress.  Along the way, we stop to feed the black-faced monkeys who are a bit wary at first but as soon as one plucks up the confidence to come forward then a whole horde of others appear as if from nowhere, rushing down the hillside and out of the trees to make sure they get their share – youngsters, large males, mothers with babies.  Two groups appear and once the food is finished what starts as a bit of minor squabbling quickly descends into fightin and Mr Sharma has to scare them off to avoid us getting caught in a full scale melee. 

On the way back to the hotel, Mr Sharma suggests we call in on the owner of the Seventh Heaven Inn who has recently moved in to a new house on the outskirts of Pushkar.  The house is enormous; built over several floors with balconies and terraces on each level and as we later discover, amazing views of Pushkar and the surrounding area from the roof.  Anoop lives here with his heavily pregnant French wife, Jan, and their two-year-old daughter.  We are welcomed with tea and coffee as if it were the most natural thing in the world for Mr Sharma to turn up unannounced with two foreign tourists in tow.  Anoop has spent several years in London living in Camberwell and St Johns Wood and we chat for a while about various parts of London, the renovation of the hotel and his plans for taking paying guests in his new house as well as the danger of kidnapping in Agra which come as a surprise to us.  We are taken up to the roof to admire the view and I’m sure we would have had a guided tour of the whole house if he hadn’t a meeting to get to at the hotel. 

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Pushkar is 30 minutes drive from < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
Ajmer, but the hotel wants 500 rupees to arrange a taxi to take us there.  We already know that the going rate is 250 rupees since that’s what we were quoted at the station when we arrived in Ajmer yesterday.  It’s also the price quoted on the website of the hotel in Pushkar where we will be staying.  We’ll try our luck at the station taxi rank.  < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /?>

First though we intend to get some breakfast and visit the Dargar Masjid.   We have breakfast in the Madeena Hotel  opposite the station.  Another Lonely Planet recommendation which turns out to be nothing as grand as a hotel, but a basic cafe popular with locals and charging local prices and specialising in a very thin, cooked –to-order roti.   It’s dirt cheap, dirt being the important word;  cleanliness not being a high priority and there are flies everywhere.  The washing up is done on the floor in a filthy alcove that can’t have been cleaned for many a year.  But, it’s recommended in Lonely Planet so it can’t be all bad – assuming of course they have ever sent someone to visit it.   The kitchen is open plan so at least we can see watch our meal being prepared and what we get is quite good and we survive the experience.

We get a pedal rickshaw to the Dargar rather than walk and it’s a good decision.  The mosque is situated in the midst of the old city and involves negotiating a maze of narrow twisting alleys and bazaars.  There is no way we would have found our way on foot, even with a map.  The alleys are heaving with people and amongst them a boy is herding a group of donkeys laden with bricks.  Some yards from the Mosque we have to dismount and walk the rest of the way as the alley becomes too narrow even for the pedal rickshaw.  Our rickshaw wallah takes it upon himself to act as our guide  and accompanies us round the mosque.  He speaks hardly any English but we get the general gist of the etiquette – where to leave our shoes, no cameras allowed and so on.  As we enter the mosque we become the subject of some excited discussion in Hindi which we can’t understand but which seems to be about the rickshaw wallah and who is going to guide us round.  The upshot of which is that we acquire another self-appointed companion with a little more English;  so we now have two people accompanying us.  

The Dargar Masjid is one of the most important pilgrimage sites in India and the number of worshippers in the outer courtyard is overwhelming.  It has the feel of a bazaar buzzing with activity and colour.   There are dozens of stalls selling trays of rose petals, incense, religious trinkets, food, offerings and such like.  People are milling around, sitting or lying on the floor chatting, playing music or just passing the time.  The scene is one of vivid fluttering saris, red petals strewn on the floor and air redolent with their sweet scent.   It’s like stepping into another world, a cleaner world of cool marble and fascinating sights and sounds. 

The Dargah is the site of the tomb of the sufi saint Khwaja Muin-ud-din-Chishti  and Muslims come here to pay their respects and to shower rose petals on the tomb.  The tiny, highy decorated mausoleum is hung with a deep blue and gold canopy and what space there is around the tomb itself is crammed to bursting with people shuffling round, pushing and shoving as they squeeze their way in bearing wicker trays of petals above their heads.  We let the crowd bear us along until we emerge through the exit on the other side of the tomb having been blessed by an imam on the way.  In another part of the mosque are two vast cauldrons, known as degs, for offering for the poor.

Built by Shah Jahan,  the open-sided, white marble prayer  hall faces  an inner courtyard and has an ornately decorated alcove pointing to Mecca.  It is a haven of peace from the hubbub in the rest of the mosque.

The Dargah has nine entrances and our guides lead us out still barefoot through another of these and into the  heaving bazaar to see the ruins of Adhai –din-ka-Jhonpra,  that was reputedly built  in two-and-half days in 1153.  Originally built as a Sanskrit college using the remains of Hindu and Jain temples,  it was later converted into a mosque by the addition of a seven arched facade carved with Arabic script.  It’s a rather grand structure with its carved pillars and towering arches.  Tossing a coin into a nook in the alcove inside the mosque is said to bring good luck, but seems more like a money making scheme as two boys change notes for coins and then collect all the coins that fall to the floor.

After collecting our shoes and our camera, the latter left  with a local shopkeeper outside the Dargar, our guides take us to view a gigantic ‘well’ which turns out to be a cavernous  cistern in the centre of the old town where monsoon rain water is collected.  As we walk back through the bazaar with its myriad stalls selling everything from glittering bangles to Indian sweets, we gather a train of young children and mothers with babies all wanting a few rupees and as we hand out a coins more children appear, constantly prodding and tapping our arms, tugging our clothes and repetitively pleading for money.  This is behaviour reserved solely for tourists;  Indians are rarely bothered in this way and if they are they give short shrift. 

We pay our self-appoint guide and take the rickshaw back to the railway station, stopping on the way to get a flat tyre pumped up.  We offer the rickshaw wallah 100 rupees – considerably more than the original fare, but he cheekily demands double.    He’s trying his luck and when we give him 150 he goes away with a big grin on his face.   At the station we pick up a taxi to Pushkar for 200 rupees and after picking up our luggage from the hotel we leave Ajmer and head for the hills.  Arriving in Pushkar there is a 15 rp entry tax for car and passengers. 

Pushkar is a small town of some 40,000;  more of a village than a town really and easily manageable on foot.  There is almost a complete absence of traffic, only the occasional moped, handcart or pedal rickshaw;  but mostly it’s only cows and people that make their way along the narrow streets.  The relative peace and quiet is a welcome relief from the normal chaos of Indian towns and cities.  Brahma was born in Pushkar and it is a holy place where pilgrims come to worship at one of the many temples (of which there are 1,000 apparently) and to bathe in Pushkar Lake.  It is also where Ghandhi’s  ashes are scattered.  The focal point is the lake in the centre of town with its 52 ghats – the steps which lead down to the lake for bathing.  Inevitably it’s heavily geared to tourists, although not unpleasantly so;  there are 400 hotels inconspicuously tucked away in the old buildings  and the bazaars that line the streets behind the ghats are a shopper’s paradise, selling local textiles, clothes, shoes, jewellery and other handicrafts.  It’s relatively clean too, and people seem to make an effort to sweep the dusty streets.  Much of the streets are unpaved or partly paved and it’s necessary to pick you way through squelchy mud when it rains.

The hotel turns out to be a real find and aptly named ‘Inn Seventh Heaven’.   It is a delightfully restored haveli, or traditional old house, with a central courtyard complete with fountain overlooked by  two galleries which give access to the rooms on the upper floors.  Marble floors, original doors,  (unglazed) windows and lots of other original features all add to its charm.  Our room opens off the first floor gallery and overlooks the dirt street at the front.  It’s traditionally furnished and has a huge king-size bed.  This is one that Lonely Planet got spot on.   There is a restaurant in the courtyard as well as a shop selling good quality, ethically produced clothes, bags, pashminas, bedspreads and cushion covers.  I could be tempted!

The weather seems much cooler here, which is a relief from the heat of the bigger cities.  There’s a little rain in the afternoon so we don’t venture out until around 4pm.  The streets may not have much traffic but there are plenty of cows wandering everywhere and children trailing westerners begging for food.  Sad to say, we’ve quickly become hardened to the beggars who are an almost continual presence and often continue to follow us around even after we’ve given them money.  We walk down onto the ghats to look at the lake only to discover that it is almost empty and well below the level of the steps.  Normally the monsoon rains would have filled the lake by this time of year, but because the rains are late the bed of the lake is exposed and the whole area looks rather forlorn.  It’s made even less attractive by the partial dredging of bottom of the lake which has left it looking a bit like a mud quarry.  All of which means the view from the ghats is rather disappointing.  There are cows wandering on the ghats and are likely to gently head butt you if you don’t get out of their way, as Andy discovers whilst stood with an Indian who has approached us for a chat. 

Being a holy place there are rules about acceptable dress which includes no exposed legs, shoulders or cleavage – although it’s OK to bear your midriff if you wear a sari.  Some Westerners don’t seem  to bother, either unaware and uncaring and the shops, rather confusingly, sell revealing clothes.   Much to Andy’s chagrin Pushkar is meat, egg, fish and alcohol free.  So for the duration of our stay Andy, who as anyone who knows him will be aware doesn’t dislikes vegetables with a passion ,  is on  a vegetarian diet.  Imagine that!

The two hour train journey from Jaipur to < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
Ajmer gives us our first real look at the countryside of Rajasthan, the state that borders Pakistan to the west and the Punjab to the north.  It’s not lush or tropical as might be expected, but arid and scrubby with stunted trees and ploughed fields which seem to be mostly in between crops.  The landscape is mostly flat with a few hills in the distance.  Ajmer has a population about a fifth that of Jaipur and is a much more manageable place;  nothing like as busy nor quite a dirty or smelly and we feel able to walk around it with some degree of comfort.  This is just a 24-hour stopover on the way to Pushkar, which is plenty of time to see the main sights.  The hotel, found through Lonely Planet, is just about acceptable for one night, but it would be a whole lot better if the sheets weren’t stained, but at least it’s quiet. 

Finding good accommodation in India is proving a little more difficult than in other places we’ve visited.  Lonely Planet isn’t reliable and independent reviews posted on sites travel sites like Trip Advisor, Asia Rooms and the like, are few.   So getting good accommodation is a bit of a hit and miss affair.  Lonely Planet may issue new editions of their guides every year, but even a cursory comparison reveals that often the information hasn’t been updated.  For instance they don’t change the room rates from one year to the next.  And we’ve come across several instances where the information is inaccurate you have to wonder if anyone has visited some of the destinations recently.

We take a stroll to visit the Jain Red Temple (Nasiyan Temple) and the Ana Sagar Temple, both of which are not too far from the hotel.  The Jain Temple is quite amazing.  A large two storey high hall is filled with golden models depicting the rather eccentric Jain concept of the ancient world as a flat disc with 13 continents and oceans depicted as concentric circles around a central holy mountain.  Alongside the world-as-a-disc model is the golden city of Ajodhya over which hovers flying swan and flying elephant gondolas.  The gaudily ornate hall and its contents can be viewed from galleries on two levels which run round three sides of the hall.

The Ana Sagar is a large lake on the banks of the pleasant (for India) Dault Bagh and Subash Bagh parks which today are crowded with people.  Overlooking the lake is a lovely marble terrace with three pavilions build by Shah Jahan under which many people are seated to escape from the heat of the sun.  The lake itself is smelly and a rather foul green colour, but this doesn’t seem to deter many people from taking a pedalo or boat ride on it.  As we meander through the park we are approached by several people who want to have their photograph taken with us.  As soon as one person asks for a photo others pluck up courage to follow suit.  We must have posed for 20 or more photos in the short walk from the lake to the park exit.  It brings home just what a novelty Europeans are in this part of the world.

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Our adopted rickshaw wallah, Muktar, is waiting for us this morning and we drive out to Jaigarh Fort which sits on the hilltop above Amber.  This huge and austere fortress has commanding views of the surrounding area towards Jaipur and the < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
Water Palace in one direction and over the hills around Amber to the vast plains that stretch out into the distance beyond.  As we stand looking down on the palace buildings of Amber and admiring the vista we can see the monsoon rain clouds rolling towards us.  We are in for a downpour.  We acquire an unsolicited ‘guide’ (who is actually a uniformed palace guard) as we make our way round, which is fortunate since the palace quarters are a maze of courtyards linked by dark, narrow corridors and we would never have seen everything on our own.  Andy chunters all the way round as a result;  he hates having people latching on uninvited and having to pay for the privilege, even if it is only a few rupees.  There is a little puppet theatre consisting of a puppeteer and a musician who put on, for a donation, a very short, but amusing performance involving four puppets – a belly dancer, two acrobats and a snake charmer – the whole thing can’t have lasted more than three or four minutes.  We trot round what by now is starting to become a familiar Moghul palace layout – some prettily decorated buildings not quite as impressive as some we have seen.  There is a beautiful formal courtyard garden with fountains (not working) though with two tall arches framing the mountain view beyond.  Once through the palace buildings our unofficial ‘guide’ expects a tip despite the signs about the place stating that tipping is not allowed and after paying him a small sum we make our way to look at the Jaya Vana, the world’s largest wheeled cannon, which also has the distinction of never having been fired in anger.  It is certainly enormous.  Another man tries to insinuate himself  as our guide to reel off information that is openly on displayed alongside the cannon.  We give him short shrift. 

The monsoon clouds we spied earlier have caught up with us and we, and several other people. are forced to take shelter under an arched gateway.  It’s only a short downpour but there seems to be an amazing amount of run off as a result and when we get back to Jaipur there is quite a bit of localised flooding.  Interestingly, Indians don’t seem to bother with rain capes or umbrellas;  they either brave the rain or take shelter and wait for it to pass. 

We have rather miscalculated our itinerary not realising that most monuments close at 4.30pm and it is already 3.30pm when we find a restaurant to have lunch.  So we have to forgo the Hawah Mahal (Palace of the Winds) and the Temple of the Sun God and instead decide to visit the jewellery bazaar after lunch.  At least that is the intention, but Muktar has other ideas.  The bazaars are not a good place to buy jewellery apparently;  he knows somewhere that is much better value and takes us to a small shop up some back alley that we would never have found in a thousand years if left to our own devices.  We cynically, and perhaps somewhat uncharitably, assume that it is somewhere he gets commission.  It turns out to be a good place though after a little haggling we return to the hotel with two bracelets (for me) and a ring (for Andy).

No more walking for us, at least not while we are in Jaipur.  Jaipur is much better viewed from the back of an auto-rickshaw – far less tiring and it doesn’t seem quite so filthy.  So we hire Muktar Hussein and his rickshaw at 400 rupees (£5) for about five hours.  On our agenda are the famed < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
Pink City, City Palace and Amber.

The Pink City is surrounded by a crenulated wall which was painted pink in 1876 by Maharaja Ram Singh in honour of a visit by the then Prince of Wales.  Originally build in 1727 by Jai Singh II it follows a grid layout with wide intersecting boulevards cutting swathes through the city dividing it into nine artisanal areas.  There are 100s of shops in the vibrant bazaars that line the boulevards;  all painted pink and carrying black Hindi script on their fascias which gives the old city a very uniform appearance.  It’s teeming with people and the traffic is horrendous – the usual mayhem  of rickshaws, mopeds, cycles, horse and carts and cows all vying for position as they weave in and out of any available space.

In the heart of the Pink City is City Palace, the official residence of the current Maharaja and home to the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum.  Like much of the old city it is painted pink with contrasting white highlights.  It is a vast complex of beautifully preserved buildings and courtyards, fabulously decorated ceilings and delicate frescos.  Entering through the Virendra Pol the first building to greet you is the lovely Mubarak Mahal (Welcome Palace) a blend of Rajasthani, Moghul and British architecture which was designated the world’s most beautiful building of the twentieth century by some august body, the name of which I forget.  An armoury is housed in the former quarters of the Maharani, a grand building with the sumptiously decorated ceilings.  The Diwan-i-Khas is a cool, open-sided marble pavilion which houses two enormous matching silver vessels that are in the Guiness Book of Records as the largest in the world.  A group of women in vibrant, richly decorated saris sit amongst the pillars applying intricate henna patterns to each other’s hands.  In the Pitnam Niwas Chowk courtyard four ornately painted gates represent spring, summer, autumn and monsoon.  Two have been lovingly restored and a third is work-in-progress.  There are several shops around the palace selling clothes, trinkets, souvenirs and jewellery and we have been advised by our driver that they are over-priced, no doubt to discourage us from making any purchases before he has a chance to take us to some factory shop where he will earn a commission.

We lunch at Ganesh, a tiny restaurant situated on top of the city wall which, despite the suspect interior, serves really tasty food.  We take a short stroll along Bapu Bazaar which specialises in clothes and shoes, but with shopkeepers continually hassling us (Indian shoppers don’t get the same treatment) it’s impossible to browse in peace.  So we retreat back to the rickshaw and head off to the Amber Fort.

Amber is situated in green hills about 11 km outside Jaipur.   Part fort, part palace, it’s faded pink walls loom high above us sitting on a rugged outcrop and it’s quite a climb to the entrance particularly in the heat.  The outer fortifications which encircle this fortress palace  and the town that nestles under its walls, hug the contours of the surrounding hills.  Once the ancient capital of Jaipur state, it is in remarkably good condition considering it dates back to 1592.  Built by Maharaja Man Singh and later extended, it is a labyrinthine palace with some striking buildings:  the sandstone and marble Diwan-i-Am pavilion which remarkably wasn’t sacked by the invading Moghuls;  the small and intricately carved marble Sila temple; the exquisite Ganesh Pol (gate) decorate with a delicate floral mural looking as fresh as the day it was first painted (almost);  the oh-so-over-the-top Jai Mundir with its mirror-encrusted facade and opposite across a formal courtyard garden the Sukh Niwas (Hall of Pleasure).  The buildings of the women’s harem, by contrast, seem rather plain and uninspiring.

As anticipated Muktar’s suggests we might like to visit a textile factory shop specialising in block printed fabrics and since he will earn a commission for taking us, we agree to go along.   After all we might see something we like.  But after looking at several bedspreads and wall hangings of rather indifferent quality we extricate ourselves and return to the hotel. 

The Hotel Karni Niwas is a tidy place but a tad impersonal.  Our room is one of several off a long first floor terrace which overlooks a pleasant garden that none seems to use and which is spoilt only by an obligatory pile of rubbish in one corner – builders’ rubble fortunately;  only an eyesore and not a health hazard.  There is no dining room, but amazingly there is room service and breakfast – and dinner too if you want it – is served on the terrace outside our room.  Importantly it’s quiet, a big plus in this country.  There is even hot water, but it’s difficult to distinguish it from the cold, the temperature of both is more or less the same.  But who needs hot water in this heat?  There are some monkeys on a flat roof opposite finding the flies just as irritating as we do.

We go for a walk to orientate ourselves with the intention of visiting the < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
Pink City.  What a mistake!  We manage to get completely lost – no street signs make map reading a nightmare.  India cities are not for exploring on foot;  pavements exist not for walking on, but for sleeping, sitting and parking and using as a toilet.  Any pavement that is available for walking on is usually broken, filthy or covered in rubbish or piles of rubble.  Indian is definitely best experienced from inside a rickshaw or even better, an air conditioned car.

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When we emerge this morning, stragglers from last night’s festivities are still on the streets looking very sore footed and exhausted as they hobble home.  We haven’t been able to discover the name of the festival but apparently it takes place over four Sundays in July and involves men (women don’t take part), mainly young men it seems, walking in bare feet for around 15 hours as they visit the temples of the city.  It’s no wonder that this morning they are treading lightly! 

We sort a few bits and pieces, pack our stuff and go for lunch.  Our train leaves < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
Agra at 17.40 and we arrive by rickshaw in plenty of time.  Surprisingly there are no porters in sight and we have to carry our luggage.  The station is heaving with people and there don’t seem to be any platform numbers.  It requires some guesswork and a few enquiries to work out where we should be and which train is going to Jaipur;  there are no destination indicators, the train number isn’t on the train and the name of the train – the only other identification – has been abbreviated on the side of the train.  On the next platform the second class carriages are full to capacity and people are hanging out of the doors as it pulls away and people are running alongside in an effort to either push others into the carriages or an attempt to do the seemingly impossible and get aboard.

The journey through the outskirts of Agra reveals people living in some appallingly squalid conditions along the railway line – amongst rubbish and building material.  People routinely walk along the tracks and children play on the edge of the tracks. 

All the stations are in darkness apart from dim lighting around the exit and there seems to be a shortage of station signs which makes it very difficult to know when to get off the train.  But we needn’t have worried, almost everyone gets off the train at Jaipur even though its going on to Udaipur.  As soon as we are out of station we are surrounded by gabbling rickshaw drivers wanting to know where we are going.  It’s impossible to shake them off even when we try to make ourselves heard above the din.  Fortunately we are rescued by our pick up and whisked off to Hotel Karni Niwas which turns out to be situated in an unpaved and potholed side street.  The room’s not bad though;  large with two small balconies, marble floors and clean . 

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India takes some getting used to and that is a gross understatement.   Invariably four experiences assault you when you step outside the confines of your hotel:  a wave of intense heat magnified by the fact that you have just stepped out of air conditioned comfort;  a barrage of noise;  rickshaw drivers touting for business;  and children either begging or trying to sell some cheap tat.  There is no avoiding them and today is no different.   Occasionally the sense is assailed by an unpleasant stench as well.  This is India!  It’s the dirtiest place we have visited by far – rubbish and litter everywhere and no-one seems the least concerned about it.  In fact, people seem to live on top of accumulated rubbish.  And God knows how awful it must be when the monsoon arrives.  We’ve come to the conclusion that Indians are so used to the state of their cities that they no longer notice the squalor.   < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /?>

Hero, the rickshaw wallah who has adopted us, is waiting outside, even though we arranged to for him to meet us much later in the morning .    No doubt he doesn’t want anyone else stepping into his shoes and snaffling his two lucrative Europeans!   First, though, we are off to the internet cafe a few doors away in an unpaved alley.   It’s in a very cramped and dingy kiosk which manages to squeeze in three terminals and a couple of plastic chairs.   Our next job is to get some cash, but after visiting several ATMs we draw the conclusion that none are working today.   It’s the eve of a festival and Hero thinks that may accounts be the reason.  It is certainly accounts for the huge banks of 6ft-plus loudspeakers and rows of loudhailers  at intervals along the roads which belt out Indian music at a decibel level high enough to make the chest vibrate and the ears ring.  

Hero has arranged for a car to take us to Fatehpur Sikri this afternoon and we set off at about midday.  A couple of hours earlier than planned, but you soon discover that you never quite get what you ask for in India.    A good toll road links Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, but  today there is some kind of hold up so we take a detour along unmade rutted roads through a small village were the accommodation ranges from rough built brick one room houses to mud huts and the occasional smarter gated bungalow.  The latter seems rather incongruous amongst the surrounding poverty.  Cows, pigs and goats roam freely and children run around either naked or bare bottomed.  A naked child stands outside the gates of one of the more presentable homes relieving himself on the driveway.  It’s a busy, lively community, the women are dressed in colourful, floaty saris and people wave and call out to us as we bump by. 

Fatehpur Sikri was for a brief period, the capital city of the Moghul Empir during the reign of Akbar.  Built on the site where the sufi , Shaik Salim Chisti, predicted that Akbar would produce an heir, the fortified city was abandoned after only 14 years due to shortage of water.  It is a remarkably well-preserved  complex and we are taken round it by an official guide.  We usually rely on the not-so-trusty Lonely Planet to keep us informed because, although a guide may provide more reliable and comprehensive information , they tend to rush round and we prefer to go out our own pace.  But on this occasion we have taken the advice of LP and taken an official guide thereby hoping to avoid being constantly hassled by unofficial guides, hawkers and beggars.   On balance not the best choice because we  get a fast-forwarded tour with a lot of repetitive information.  Ah well, you live and you learn.

The site is in two parts – the government-run palace buildings and the trust-run Jama Masjid mosque.  The latter is still very much in use and is full of noise and colour whereas the palace grounds are quiet and sedate.   The palace is a jumble of interlinking courtyards, gardens, pavilions and residences some built of red sandstone by Akbar and others of marble, the later additions of Shah Jahan.  There are some wonderful examples of intricate carving much of which looks as sharp now as when it was originally carved and combines Christian, Muslim, Jain and Hindu traditions.  The unusual Diwani-i-Khas appears to be a conventional two-storey building from the outside, but the surprising interior is dominated by a central ornately carved from a single piece of stone which broadens into a central plinth linked to the four corners of a surrounding gallery by narrow stone bridges where Akbar held private audiences. 

The mosque is humming with people who have come to pay their respects at the tomb the sufi, Shiekh Salim Chisti and probably quite a few who have come just for a day out .  The tomb dominates the small mausoleum which is decorated with oil murals and has a canopy covered with mother-of-pearl.  Our guide introduces us to a holy man who wants us to give a charitable donation of 2000 rupees so hat we can lay a silk sari and flowers over the tomb – apparently a traditional form of respect, which we suspect is primarily designed to part tourists from their money.  The price falls dramatically to 200 rupees when we walk away!  The mosque faces a huge courtyard with a colonnaded arcade on three sides and what is reputed to be the largest gateway in Asia.  There is an also an underground tunnel leading from the behind  the sufi’s tomb which is said to link Fatehpur Sikri with Agra some 45 km away.

When we arrive back at the hotel the festival is starting to liven up and unfortunately there are a bank of speakers in the street right outside our bedroom window.  The noise is deafening and the hotel predict that it will continue until midnight or later.  So we escape to a quiet restaurant for some respite.  On our return the road is closed and the streets are full of exuberant and excitable young men chanting and dancing.  We walk along with the crowd for a while and people want to shake hands and have their photograph taken.  It’s exhilarating and slightly unnerving at the same time.  When the partying stopped we have no idea because somehow we managed to get to sleep despite the deafening din.

Another early start today;  we are up at < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
5.30 am in order to get to the Taj Mahal for opening time at 6am.  Fortunately the hotel is only 10 minutes walk from the Taj through a pleasant park.  This is the best time of day to visit, before it gets too hot and is over-run by the tour groups that start to arrive around 9am.  < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /?>

This is what we came to Agra to see and it doesn’t disappoint.  The Taj Mahal is every bit as beautiful as the hype and the pictures depict.  Built on a raised platform so that it has only the sky as backdrop it looks so serene.   Perfectly symmetrical with four minarets leaning slightly outwards, apparently, according to one theory, to protect the mausoleum in the event of an earthquake, and intricately decorated with pietra dura – it is the most stunningly gorgeous of buildings.  And it looks almost as perfect as when it was built.  What more can one say about one of the world’s most iconic buildings?

By the time we leave the grounds are starting to get crowded – it must be a nightmare later in the day.  We are back at the hotel in time for breakfast and our two rickshaw drivers are waiting for us when we emerge around 10 am. 

First stop is the Jamu Mosque with it’s horizontally striped sandstone and marble domes.  Getting there involves negotiating the horrendously busy market area of old Agra.  And that is an experience in itself!  Entry is free, but everyone wants baksheesh – the shoe wallah,  the man who provides the modesty sarong for Andy, the man who shows us the inside of the mosque, the man who tells us we can take photographs, as well as a boy who does nothing but be there!  Although smaller, the mosque is similar in layout to the Jama mosque in Delhi.  There are no socks on offer this time though.  Instead a rather dirty and disintegrating runner soaked with water is laid across the courtyard in various directions to protect bare feet from the intense heat of the paving stones. 

For lunch our rickshaw drivers take us to the Green Garden Restaurant, a quiet spot with a large lawned garden and a parachute for shade.   A real oasis of peace and quiet in the middle of Agra as well as good, cheap food.

After lunch we willingly allow ourselves to be ferried around the local artisan shops, all of which give drivers commission and also pay them a percentage of any sale.   Along the way there a herd of black oxen are being herded through the traffic and every so often we spot a monkey.  We visit a jewellers, a leather shop, marble factory (interesting to see how pietra dura inlaying is created – such painstakingly detailed craftmanship), clothes shops and a carpet shop, where we have a demonstration of the carpet making process and where I fall in love with, and purchase, two rugs which will be shipped back to the UK to arrive just after we get back – I hope!

It’s an early start this morning to catch the < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
6.15 am train to Jaipur.  At this time in the morning Delhi is largely traffic free and, unusually quiet.  People are sleeping on the pavements;  some on the floor, others on simple cots.  One large traffic island is completely crowded with sleeping bodies.  There is a cow alongside the central reservation, completely unperturbed by the traffic.  < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /?>

The station is busy and chaotic when we arrive and we have had to pay the driver before we get to the station because he isn’t an official taxi and should apparently not be dropping off fare paying passengers.   A porter is immediately on our case as soon as we get out of the car and unbelievably carries both our rucksacks, weighing around 30 kilos, on his head! 

India has a very efficient on-line booking system for train tickets and once registered it is possible to book 10 rails journeys per month via the internet.  It’s quite straightforward, if a little long-winded and it seems to work.  There are some 5or 6 categories of seat from 1^st class air conditioned sleepers to second class chairs.  The latter being the cheapest class and the one used by most Indians.  Sleepers and first and second class air con chairs have to be reserved in advance and it’s not possible to buy tickets for same day travel.  Some of the routes, particularly the long-distance ones get booked up weeks in advance and the rail network is so busy that there is at tiered waiting list system for cancelled tickets.   We had originally intended to go from Delhi to Varanasi overnight, but it was fully booked and would have meant spending another week in Delhi.  So instead we have decided to go to  Agra and then on to Rajasthan and perhaps we may get to Varanasi later.

The 2^nd class air conditioned carriage is quite orderly and comfortable and amazingly given the price,  ticket includes a reasonable breakfast  served at your seat like an airline meal.  It’s just over two hours to Agra and we arrive at 8.30am.  We have to fend off numerous rickshaw drivers whilst we wait for the hotel pick up to arrive, which he does after a few minutes and once we have negotiated  the heavy traffic around the station the route to the hotel is along wide, reasonably tidy and quiet streets.   But by the time we reach our hotel the character of the place has changed.  There are few cars in Agra but the streets are congested with other types of transport – pedal and auto-rickshaws, horse drawn carts and carriages, hand carts, donkeys,  cows, camel carts, mopeds and bicycles – and it’s noisy, very noisy.  Like Delhi those that have a horn like to use it … frequently.

The Maya Hotel and Restaurant isn’t geared up for early arrivals and we have to wait until 10.30 before we can register and get into our room.  Registration is an interesting example of Indian bureaucracy – a register has to be completed with all manner of information about our passports, visas, how long we are staying in India, where we’ve travelled from and where we are going to, address, etc, etc.  Then the same information has to be transferred onto a three-part duplicated form.  Eventually formalities completed we can get into our room.  The hotel doesn’t quite live up to the puff on it’s website – it could hardly be described as ‘magical’, but it does have a huge marble bed, a television (always a mixed blessing), a shower with hot and cold water (although it’s difficult to tell which is which from the temperature of the water) and a rather scruffy balcony.

Stepping out of the hotel onto the street invites unwelcome attention from several hawkers, beggars and rickshaw drivers all eager to part you from your money.  We are swiftly adopted by a rickshaw driver who 20 rupees will take us to a restaurant we have identified in Lonely Planet .  He is still waiting for us when we emerge about an hour later and before we know it we have Hero for the rest of the day and as it turns out, for the rest of our stay in Agra.  Somewhere between Agra Fort and the Baby Taj, his friend, Salim, is co-opted to help out and we have two drivers – for the same price, naturally.  But Hero is a wily old bird, he’s letting us decide how much we want to pay him, knowing full well we suspect, that we will pay him well over the going rate (which is so low as to be embarrassing).  Also as the day progresses it becomes apparent that he will supplement any income he gets from us, with commission he picks up along the way from restaurants and shops we visit. 

Agra Fort is probably more impressive than the Red Fort in Delhi in terms of overall size and the extent of the palace complex.  Situated on the bank of the Yamuna River with a splendid view of the Taj Mahal in the distance, it was begun by Emperor Akbar, the first of the Moghul emperors, 8in 1565 and further added to , particularly by his grandson, Shah Jahan, who transformed it into a beautifully ornamented palace,  in which he was later to be imprisoned by his son, Aurangzeb.  The fort is enclosed by colossal walls 20 metres high and 2.5km in circumference.  It contains a labyrinth of interlinked buildings many built in marble intricately inlaid with semi-precious stones – all in remarkably good condition –  a central garden and water features.  Apparently there is a massive underground complex as well, which is not open to the public.

Across the Yamuna is Itimad-Ud-Daulah – also known as the Baby Taj – the tomb of Persian nobleman Mizra Ghiyas Beg.  It was the first Mughal building to be constructed entirely of marble.  It is extensively decorated with delicate pietra dura – inlayed semi-precious stones.  A forerunner of the Taj Mahal but on a smaller scale, it is a stunningly beautiful building , remarkably preserved to say that it was built between 1622 and 1628.

Our final destination is to a spot on the east bank of the Yamuna River for a view of the back of the Taj Mahal.  This is supposed to be a good vantage