Jodhpur

The plan was to only spend a couple of days in Jodhpur, as apparently the only major sight is it's fort. So my plan was to get accommodation near the train station to make it convenient for booking our onward journey, and for getting the train when the time came.

It turned out that the guidebook gave the wrong location for a guesthouse (that's happened a few times now, and is extremely frustrating, as finding a place in 3rd-world countries with no street name signs is difficult at the best of times), so I spent a very frustrating hour walking up and down the road near the train station looking for a place to stay (the other nearby place that the books recommended was full, the first time we've encountered a full hotel in India). Sarah eventually haggled another hotel down to a good price and we just settled in there (Hotel Sheeva, right across from the train station).

The rest of that afternoon we just checked out the town a bit, getting a lovely tasty local Makhania Lassi from Mishri Lal beside the clock tower. But the city all seemed much more run-down than other Indian towns we've been through, and so I was happy with my decision to leave on a train once we'd checked out the local fort.

Next morning we got a lovely breakfast around the corner from our hotel at Midtown, and then strolled all the way through the bazaars and up the hill to the fort. The entrance fee for the fort includes an audio guide, and this turned out (as both books rightly mentioned), to be a really fantastic guide. Normally I'll avoid guides (human or audio), like the plague, as usually you have to really concentrate to understand their bad English, or else they move along really slowly (waiting for some Epsilon to catch up), or else their commentary is just really boring (seeing as how they have to iterate it 5 times a day, every day). But this audio guide was a revelation - the writing was superbly eloquent, it was interwoven with quotes from current princes and the current Maharaja and the narrator's voice was prefectly clear and a genuine joy to listen to (it ranked up there with Richard Burton on the 'War of the Worlds' album as the most beautiful spoken voice I've ever heard, or as captivating as the posh voice on the Orb's 'Land of Green Ginger'!).

So after our few relaxing hours strolling around the mightily impressive fort we walked to the nearby Jaswant Thanda site. This is a beautiful pillared marble memorial that gives probably the best views of the fort itself (the incredible scale of the walls of the fort are hard to appreciate when your right up against them). From here I took a shortcut back to the clocktower centre (while I had to listen to the Negator trying to dissuade me from any deviation from the map - we were fine!), for another saffron lassi at the cool, buzzy Mishri Lal.

Next it was a stroll to the Umaid Gardens, popping into the small, rather decrepit museum before making our way to one of the local fancy hotels, the Ajit Bhawan. It wasn't a great looking place, but the restaurant looked nice, and the menu was surprisingly cheap. But from here it was a quick rickshaw ride to the really famous local hotel, the Umaid Bhawan Palace.

Here we first visited the small museum, and then tried to get into the hotel itself. Again this is a gated complex, and really you need a reservation. This is because the place is a major tourist attraction in it's own right, but being such a high-class hotel, they don't want scummy backpackers walking around. But I think because it's low-season, and the hotel was very quite we managed to wrangle our way in by simply following behind 2 other tourists.

It really is a very impressive place, although I think the Lonely Planet is right when it suggests that many guests have found it overbearing. It's all dark corridors and huge marble entrances, but the staff were few and far between, which meant we could stroll about at our leisure without getting hassled or asked for our room number!

The restaurant had a 3000 rupee minimum order per person, which was a real pity, as I would have stayed and eaten there otherwise (even from the expensive al-a-carte menu what I wanted to order only amounted to 2000 rupee max). The restaurant was completely empty anyway, and didn't look all that special, so I wasn't too disappointed. Instead we walked back to the Ajit Bhawan and had a great dinner there. I was tempted to get the buffet, but I managed to stick to my no-buffet rule, and I wasn't disappointed!

So after that it was back to our hotel (and some unwelcome guests of the rodent variety!), but up early to catch the train at 5:15am. At the station it turned out that our train was 2 hours late, by far our largest delay so far. Not only that, but when the train arrived it was mayhem in our carriage and people were sitting in our reserved seats.

The occupants of our seats didn't speak any English (or at least acted like they didn't), but another passenger did, and he seemed to be trying to get the people out of our seats, but to no avail - just blank stares and nodding heads. A bit later though everyone just squished up together and made room for us to squeeze in, so it was a fairly comfortable few hours before more passengers disembarked and we eventually had plenty of room on our seats for the rest of the journey to the desert town of Jaisalmer.