24th-26th jan

have had a few days off from the blog, mainly cos we've doing some cross-countrying and perhaps because i've been completely knackered as well!
Writing this from the train today...omg i love our lil laptop! been great and i am actually starting to beat the computer in tetris now..
so anyways writing from the train...executive class no less! i know you're thinking that sounds pretty typical from arn! but honestly i just didn't want to travel with every mn and his dog on wooden seats and dirty toilets! didn't ACTUALLY know this was like first class type thing. however not complaining as have these massive seats that recline, just had ome supper served to us...includding a samosa type thing, chocolate bar, cashew nuts, a fudgey thing and some spicy mix thingy which was really nice! they also come through and hand out water to drink. oh the best part, with the supper of coruse you get offered some chai (tea) but you get this lil thermos full of hot water! to drink at your leisure i guess. i got a lil “tea pack” full of sugar, milk and teas. sooo cool, am loving this executive thing. i was born for first class, people!
So the last few days have been actioned packed, on the 24th we mished around Udaipur for our lastt few hours there. did some shopping too which is always up my street. that night we took a sleep train to Jaipur. Slightly bigger tain this time from our last sleeper, curtains in stead of cabins and you have 4 on one side and 2 on the other (bunked). top bunks again but thats ok, these ones actually had ladders which is nice for unco's like me. anyways fell asleep, all good, and then couple hours (if that) woke up to the most atrocious snoring you have ever heard and that wa pretty much the end of my sleeping that night. i was like, are you kidding me???!!! thats ridiculous. i am surprised their wives haven''t stabbed them in their sleep. i personally could have taken out at least one.
So arrived jaipur tired and VERYgrumpy, and after a few false starts we managed to find some available accom, which was a relief. Chilled out and i organised our next trains. during breakfast met these very full on canadian girls who invited us to join them (i was't grumoy anymore btw, a hot shower helps) on a tour of some temples and despite agreeing it turns out that auto rickshaws can't take 5 people which ended up fine since we would do our own thing. gt our tickets for the remaining of our “northern states” part and hired our own driver to go to the palace and fort. Palace was really great, some of it in the most amazing conidtion, considering it dats back to like 1600's or something. lots of original doors woith artwork still on them. then climbed like 500 ft or some stupid up to the fort which wasnt so amazing tho you got an amazing few of a town below. wanted to die my legs were so sore. london does't exactly have many mountians to climb, and thank god for that.
saw like the biggest cannon or something but i liked th camel oil carrier from the 10th century...like how old is that!!! pretty cool.
stopped off at a monkey temple on our way home, heaps of monkeys tho i don't like them getting too close! you always se those types of monkeys on like infection movies... but den got some good shots. got some amazing photos of a family living on the side of the road, you're sposed to pay them so not really begging but still always makes me so sad, life is so hard for them. Den had no small change, 5 rupees is about 6p or something, so den gave the mother 50 rupees which is about 60p, nothing to s but you can buiy a surprising amount for 50 rupees. anyways she was really amazed and pleased so nice to do soemthing good. lots of beggars here, and they are SO persistant, you have to ignore them for about 5 mins before tey go away. always find it so hard to turn away but you do know not to encourage them, since they often stop working and take their children out of school for it, but i do find it difficult to ignore.
so came back to our place that night, fell asleep for an hour, was completely spent! had a bit of a revival and headed out an got some food. ended up complety stuffing ourselves but damn it was good. nice to have some good cold kingfisher!
SO today we headed to the pink old city. its painted “pink” because i think the maharaja (like the king) wanted a pink city...its not really pink anymore, more like terracotta. so we walked around there and climbed this big tower thing for a view of te old city. i am getting tired of climbing things!
den got some good photos of some of the local commerical streets, think that jaipur is far dirtier than udaipur or mumbai. alley ways just full of trash and crap, ugh. makes for some bad smells! alnmost got runover several times, it gets quite tiring to dodge all the motorbikes and scooter, and cows, goats (saw one wearing a mans shirt today,classic), poo, piles of crap, piles of dust, people, rickshaws, autorickshaws and beggars. nice to sit down now and let someone else navigate for a bit! good for some R&R. and nice to ha no horns tooting at you.