Awake at 5am, not my choice let's just blame Hotel Saket's restaurant, I waited an hour before I ventured out of the room onto Green Park Resort's open airy corridors and did 30 minutes of peafowl spotting, viewing 5 of them on the roof of a nearby hotel.

I spent one hour of removing Bharatpur's cyber cafe trojan horses - thanks a lot :-( - some blog updating and email stuff before the router died a horrible death I took the kids for breakfast. Jane and I weren't eating (refer back to Hotel Saket comment) but the kids as usual were unstoppable in consumption of banana, and this time nutella, pancakes.

So we leave for Jodhpur with a very poorly Jane in the back seat wondering how she'll cope with 5 hours in a hot car. She got through it though.

It seemed that Kamal was either lost or taking a shortcut unknown to anyone else - I suspect the latter -but we had to stop to wait for the train to pass at Pipar Road Junction, in the middle of nowhere. Got out of the car and I spoke to some of the local men while Emiled smiled with some local girls. I suspect that they'd rarely seen, or maybe even never seen, western children as young as ours as they seemed very inquisitive although somewhat shy. 

As the train pulls out from the nearby station it seemed that everyone aboard wanted their photo taken. I oblige and realise that frames per second is worth worrying about when buying a new SLR: I hadn't done. I really enjoyed this experience. Real India, real people.

Five very hot travellers arrive in Jodhpur, 240 kms and 4.5 hours travel; it's time for lunch as it's already 2:15pm.

A rest (and a sleep for the older ones) later and we go out for a walk in Ratanada, the area surrounding our hotel. We're on the look out for the restaurant named Bollygood which sounds fun. Rough Guide's map is hopelessly inaccurate so we return and ask the hotel where the restaurant is. The point out the location on the map and second the recommendations I'd got from Rough Guide and people from IndiaMike.

Tonight we dined in the hotels' courtyard. Feeling slightly poorly didn't dissuade me from try their mixed tandoori platter which was served with a sublime mint sauce. Internet connection seems good so some more blogging has to be done to appease those critical of the recent lack of updates - although I can't image they're that bothered.

Pushkar was included in my itinerary for only one reason: to split up the journey from Jaipur to Jodhpur. I was interested to see the tiny lake surrounded by 500 temples but really I should have known it wouldn't be my kind of place: there's something about deeply religious cities or towns that does me in, probably because it's not my religion, if indeed I actually have one (sorry Dad, you know what I mean I'm sure!).

We made our way to the ghats via the Jaipur Ghat - each Maharajah had his own bathing ghat into the lake - after buying four lovely cushion covers (for Jane obviously; men don't do soft furnishings right?) for Rs350 (about £5) for the conservatory. We were immediately accosted by Bramin priest, authentic or not I'm not sure.

"Take these petals and throw them into the lake" he said, followed by words like "everyone pays us a fortune for these petals and if you don't the market sellers will shun you". We walked on thinking that the last market seller seemed more than happy to take our money at 5pm; apparently we were his first customer of the day, yeah right!

At this point I thought, "I'll push this car out of Pushkar if I have to" (hey, no groaning, it wasn't meant to be a joke).

After buying another pair of Kameez trousers for Amy from another happy-to-see-the-non-worshipping-foreigners we returned to our hotel, the Green Park resort for dinner. On the way we got stopped by an old man selling hand made shoes. "Oh no" I thought, here we go again, what is he going to try and sell me, hasn't he heard about The Downfall Of Ali Baba?  It turned out that his granddaughter was a few hundred yards away, would love to meet the girls and could he phone her to come quickly. I agreed and a mobile phone call and a puffed out 10 year old Indian girl arrived at the stall, not being able to talk, but happy to see two western children. A couple of photos later and a nice chat, we bid them farewell.

This chance meeting, followed by seeing a peacock up really close made Pushkar slightly more bearable.

Kamal, who wanted to us to leave at 9am, was pleased to see us on time, for once. Five minutes later we got in the jeep; I was on my four-hour journey to Pushkar. Three or so hours later, nearing Pushkar, we counted 18 camels; they were extremely tall. Some of the camel were pulling carts however others were just staying still.

(NOTE: this isn't one of my photos, I grabbed it from the interwebbythingy) 

Eventually we got to our hotel, the Green Park Resort, which is great because it has a lovely swimming pool; our first one so far. Finally, we went for a long-awaited swim in the pool; it was really cold; it was lovely. After that I had my lunch, my sister and I both had a Margherita pizza - as Pushkar is a vegetarian town and no eggs either - it was very fresh and very hot (out of the oven). After lunch we had another swim, after waiting 30 minutes of course.

Last of all, my family and I went for a walk into Pushkar town, which is a town centered around a very religious lake which is surrounded by 500 hindu temples and bathing ghats leading into the lake. We were dodging cows and motorbikes all the time; it was quite scary. Overall, I had a great day.

Emilia.

The idea of booking a taxi (car and a driver) for a few days or weeks seem quite strange to someone in England. Once when I missed the last bus home from the local town it cost 20 pounds to travel the six miles, so how much would hiring a driver for a couple of weeks cost?

With the help of Indiamike.com I gathered together a list of reputable companies and eventually decided which ones to contact.

Aided by information provided by Namaste India Tours, I'd done my homework first, knew my exact route, when/where I'd arrive, what sort of hotels I preferred and what sort of vehicle was most suitable.

So a couple of emails to a few companies and I had quotes for the cost of the travel. All of the operators offer a travel+hotels option where you say which class of hotel you prefer and they come up with a list of suggestions. Some of them don't define the actual hotel you'll be in and that was fine with us, after all we've got a driver to take us wherever we want, so as long as the hotel is okay, we'll be fine.

The best thing about this service (from any of the operators we got quotes from) is that you pay absolutely nothing up-front, you just have to pay before the trip actually commences. Some don't even worry about this, you pay part way through your tour.

For those cynics out there, the cost of the trip includes wages, food and accomodation for the driver, he doesn't sleep in the car!

And the cost of all this:

• 10 nights hotel, 10 days touring around including petrol/parking/taxes/driver: about £800
• That's for all of us, not one of us. The hotels all have air-con, some have pools, some don't.