Blogging from the past - planes, trains and autorickshaws

We haven't blogged for ages due to a combination of mad timetables and then erratic electricity connections in Rajastan. It's our last night away as I attach this belated bit of the blog....but imagine us 4 nights ago....


I write from inside the walls of Jaisalmer Fort - with Jamin our host at Ganesh Homestay watching a Hindi Cartoon network cartoon / cricket(now Discovery channel - very distracting) beside me as the rest of the family sit around a fire in a bowl outside! We have had a hell of a day! We set of from Jodpur at 5.30am for our 6.30 train - only then to wait for 3 hours for the Delhi Express to arrive!! Fortunately for us we discovered a waiting room for 2nd class passengers that was heated - the rest of the passengers were camped on the floor outside in the cold covered by various blankets! At 9 our train finally arrived and we had found an omlette man on the platform- thank gXd as it turned out to be our last proper food all day until we arrived and then got out to eat at 6. The travelling caught up with Tobes today and we pretty much had tantrums the entire 6 hour journey as he refused to eat and then demanded cake constantly (clearly this he has inherited from me - kate). Of course he fell asleep 5 mins before we arrived. So our journey through the desert was less appreciated than it might have been! I tell you this to show the highs and lows of our adventure - particularly this week!

Despite hellish train journeys (only one 15-20 hour one left!!) We are so so pleased to be doing this last mad dash of a week. It keeps us from thinking about returning and counting down so much... and it is more than we dreamt it would be. We spent saturday exploring Jaipur with a great young rickshaw driver called ally - The Amber fort - our first Rajastani fort was awesome - we climbed up the golden dusty steps accompanied by painted elephants kicking up the sand then we explored the maze of corridors and palace rooms. Toby loves these places and runs pretending to be kings and soldiers around the ramparts. We stopped at a water palace then feasted on veggy thalis in a cafe beside the road... then another climb upto a monkey temple where the most cocky monkeys took turns to either dismiss our nuts or try to steal the whole bag, then another climb up to Naragh Fort which sits above the city. It is a 2 km walk up windy steep paths - we are exhausted by the time we get there we are shattered but it is worth the pain we gaze breathless at the views and then explore a maharaja's palace complete with 9 apartments for all his wives - influenced by europe so strangely looking a little Italian in places with shutters, fireplaces etc. Then we ran down the hill - Toby complete with kite that a man had given him! At the bottom Matty dared another shave - complete with dash of old spice !! The following day we went to the most amazing observatory with the largest sundial in the world - about 2 stories high... a sureal display of marble instruments for telling the time and star signs looking a little like a Dali picture!

Our train ride to Jodphur was ok! We sort of got lucky and shared the train section with 2 families with 2 three year old boys... all of whom (Toby included) slept for 2 hrs. But our 5 hr train journey in the afternoon, like so many here, turned into 7 and the boys grew crazier and crazier together... one of the mothers was a crazy mix of very maternal and educational/ crazy - pretending to shoot and punch them. By the end of the journey the whole carriage was going stir crazy and all our indian fellow passangers took to making origami planes, boats, boxes, guns etc out of newspapers... this is clearly an Indian skill we hadn't heard of!

We were dead on our feet but our ride to our hotel was so exhilerating that we soon came back to life! As we drove deep into the blue city the lanes got narrower and narrower, overshadowed by crumbling balconies, intricate stone lace work, ... passing healthy cows defiantly standing in the way and forcing the rickshaw to dodge them. we then ran into a band, and then not one but 2 crazy weddings... leaving us stuck in a rickshaw traffic jam with jaws open. Above us an enormous golden fort and ramparts loomed, and the houses got bluer. We had got seriously lucky with our hotel - through a tiny wooden doorway and up 4 flights of steep stone stairs, onto a roof terrace above the blue city up a further flight of ourdoor stairs to the very top of the house we had a bejewelled pink room with 10 windows framed by painted flowers each overlooking the fort and the city. Toby had the best bed yet, an alcove hung with sari curtains! And hot water - all for about 15 pounds! My highlight was waking up - turning around in bed and realising the window behind us framed the most stunning view of the blue box city!

One day in Jodphur is not enough - but just enough to explore another amazing fort complete with palm prints of 16 (I think) queens who committed suicide jumping into the fire of the early dead king - for us to see a wall in which a man volunteered to be and was buried alive in order to rid the city of the curse of no water - for Matty to have a hilariously inaccurate palm reading - for me to explore the amazing markets leaving with my prize purchase being a pink and blue rolling pin!!!! but really a highlight was sitting on our roof dazzled by the site of the indigo blue box city, listening to voices of life echo up around us and watching people hanging out their washing chatting and drinking tea. i did not want to leave...

but here we are now in one of the most westerly parts of India - in a city we really wanted to see from the start! Jaisalmer is like a fairy tale sand castle on a giant beach of desert that spreads to the horizons from every angle I've seen so far. Inside it is a maze of tiny golden sandy streets... the cows are the friendliest we have encountered and you have to squeeze past their lovely soft full bellies - Tobes and I can't resist stroking them each time - matty has not yet recovered from his encounter in Jaipur to have this confidence yet!

(NB - I am now writing this from our last night - so from recollection!!)

The people in Jaisalmer are lovely - yes of course trying to persuade you to shop/ buy - as always - but lovely and chatty. We eat at tiny roof top tables on grubby but gorgeous sari covered cushions overlooking the ramparts and then just endless scrubland desert. Our first morning we head out in search of breakfast as ususal but find out that the forts laid back nature extends to breakfast... at 9am we still find no where substantial open (i.e. more than chai shops) - we keep sitting down and being ignored while the men spend ages preening themselves having just got up from their beds on the floor. Finally we stumbleinto a tiny cafe run by Lucky Fatan - a young guy with the most amazing blue eyes that look like a desert - sand and sky. Highlight of this visit being our request for a napkin for tobes - at which point Fatan looks crestfallen and says he has forgotten them and offers up the scarf from round his neck!!!! We weren't sure what was worse - the thought of wipping toby's porrige and snot up with the sweaty scarf or Fatan then putting it back on afterwards and carrying on cooking... hygiene is not a strong point here - I might have mentioned this before!

Later that day we head off for our camel safari! It is cold here and so we have opted for half a day rather than overnight. We drive an hour into the desert stopping at 2 villages. T is on top form and has finally realised that if he shakes hands he doesn't get pinched. He takes up this new tactic with the 30 or so children who appear and then starts a crazy hysterical game of chase... ending up inside the welcoming arms and house of one of the mothers. Aside from wondering whether he is a girl or boy everyone in the villages seems delighted!

Tobes and I share a camel and head off bundled up against the elements. M on a more excitable one!The scrubland becomes dunes - and then suddenly matty and another girl - Lesley - zoom off on their camels into the distance!! We are attached to another camel with another lovely canadian on it - her 7 year old driver climbs onto the back of her camel and then we are alone... in the dunes just Tobes in front - age 3 steering - seriously!

The dunes are amazing - the sun comes down and we end up round a camp fire - singing.... Alongside the 2 canadian girls we are also accompanied by Maria a Taiwanese woman who earlier had complained that the desert had trees in it and this was not what she expected. She is in India for the first time and, having nearly died of food poisening in Egypt a few years back, she has brought food with her for her entire trip... so as the two guys prepare our whole meal - of dhaal, veg curry, freshly made bread, rice and poppas - from scratch, Maria interrupts to ask them to cook her taiwanese pot noodle on one of the two twig fires - using her bottled evian!

After eating we tell stories - dominated by maria's story 50min long story of how she almost died after falling of a horse in Kashmir (very longwinded - the guys keep giggling ) and the guys sing Rajastani love songs which all feature the partitian of Pakistan! One of the guys grandfathers family is all stuck over the border and they cannot visit him.

This is really our last night of adventure - after tonight we have an overnight train journey back to Jaipur then 3 nights in mumbai. What a night and I cannot believe it when standing in the pitch dark - feet sinking into the dune I spot a shooting star!

M,T and I lie backs on the sand snuggled up staring up at the stars, joining them up to make shapes and - excuse me atheists ... thanking god for this amazing adventure. Real darkness is absorbing - it really feels like it gets into your clothes, you loose sense of perspectives... I have to dare myself to make the most of this and really wander in the dunes a little alone - just keeping an eye on the campfire in the increasing distance. It is the type of darkness where you start to hear your heart beating - faster and faster.

Our peaceful evening is brought to an abrupt end as the dog, which as accompanied us along the trail, starts barking at something we cannot see! and then fighting with it... SCARY! Then Maria the mad taiwanese woman suddenly mentions she has a train to catch.

So we jump in the jeep castle bound, tucked up under blankets, tarpaulin. One of the camel guys hops on his camel and shoots off into the dark distance. We drive home across the desert plains spotting desert deer in headlights! and then rabbits before crawling up the ramparts to our room.

Our last day here is sad - again we could have stayed so so much longer. After just 2 nights here we know so many familiar faces and the names of people in the fort. There are not many foreign children here and Toby is our USP. I have sat chatting to parents living in the fort whilst Toby plays with the kids on the old watering holes inside the fort.

We buy leather belts, hats and bags from a lovely guy called Monarch who takes to Toby. He tells us his mother always used to say the naughty children always do best in life - are the most intelligent! I like Monarch a lot ... As I watch Toby pretending to be a shop keeper in the tiny shop in the old town and then darting off into the neighbours shops. Monarch also says his big head is good - I like Monarch a lot more than the Thai man who told us T's hair was too thin and his forehead too big!

After our last lunch we catch an afternoon and then overnight train back to Jaipur - our last overnight train! Hooray! It is ok and we arrive in at 5am - I am grateful for M's insistence that we book a hotel room. We crash into bed shattered and wake up - our last morning in Rajastan - to open our balcony door and chat to a girl getting ready for school on the rooftop opposite us - brushing and oiling her thick glossy hair... and to spot our last monkeys stealing a garland of flowers and playing chase across the balconies. Then we begin the journey home!