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.

I know some of you have spotted them already but some of the photos have been uploaded to the gallery: http://www.winchcombe.org/gallery.aspx?gallery=India%202009

The gallery for each place is also linked into the Where In The World map.

Now don't get excited, I'm not buying anything for you but I thought I'd just mention about some of the things we've bought so far and their prices. I'm sure I didn't pay the lowest price for any of this but te prices do seem so low compared to back home.

In Agra, just outside the Taj Mahal - it isn't usually a good idea to buy anything near a tourist attraction but we couldn't help ourselves - we bought some lovely coasters made out of "marble" (I don't think!) with inlaid "precious stones" (not!) and carved too: 3 sets of 6 for Rs450, that's about £6.50.

A little boy selling guide books started out with his price for a rather ropey looking Taj Mahal guide book at "normally I sell for Rs2000 but for you Mister, RS1000". I laughed, walked on (repeat many times) and finally got it for Rs120 (£1.60ish)

In Jaipur the girls bought their Salwar Kameez's for £10 each and considering that Amy's was tailored made, I thought that's pretty cheap.

In Amber, Amy bought two cloth puppets (Maharajah and Maharani) with painted wooden faces for Rs150 (down from Rs1600) which is about £2.

In Pushkar last night we bought some cushion covers for Rs350, which is about £5.

Some Rajasthan cities are known by their colour and today we're in Jaipur, "The Pink City", so called because the walls of the old city are painted with a pink wash. On a colour theme, in a few days time we'll be moving on to Jodhpur, "The Blue City".

Jane and I have been to Jaipur before and I we fondly remember the guide's statement about the city when we went for a stroll through the city at rush hour: "There's 2 million people that live in Jaipur and on this walk you'll probably bump into most of them". How true it seemed then, but now it seems a whole lot busier. 

Yesterday we travelled to Amber Fort which is probably my favourite fort from my previous time in India. It truly is a wonderful place and would be 100% better if those pesky monkeys weren't around.

"Ali Baba" took 19 photographs of the family on our elephant ride to the Amber Fort and told me to meet him in the car park after our visit.

I forgot. He didn't and he chased the car up the road once he spotted us. We stopped and he thrust the photos in my hand. "Only 100 rupees each sir". I laughed.

So that'd work out at about 30 quid. I don't think so.

He quickly dropped his price again and again, without me saying anything, with each price drop so did his enthusiasm for selling the photos.

He'd obviously failed to realise that if I didn't buy them no-one else would.

I said 200 rupees and he laughed, or was it cried?

He tried to get our driver Kamal into the argument and get him to say that 500 was a good price - it was - but it was a difficult position for Kamal to get into so he refused.

Minutes later I handed two crisp 100 rupee notes to Ali Baba and we drove away, Kamal laughing at how cheap we had bought them for, he'd have paid double!

Wednesday 1st April
We travelled to Jaipur for 3.5 hours. Then we drove to McDonalds for lunch before going to a tailors where I got measured for my very own Salwar Kameez (it's leggings with a long knee-length top), which will be ready in 24 hours. After that we went to the City Palace where I had audio guide to tell me about the palace history and buildings. We knew the Maharajah was in the city because the flag was flying high. We saw two collosal silver urns made from 15000 silver coins melted down until they could be made into the urn. The urns carried water from the sacred River Ganges for the Maharajah when he visited the UK.

Thursday 2nd April
Today we went to the Amber Fort. When we drove the bend I saw the Amber Fort for the first time, it was very exciting and I said "Hey Emilia, look at the walls they are so big". As we arrived at the majestic Amber Fort we went up some steps to get on a elephant's back for the long slow ride up to the fort which was high up on a hill. It was very wobbly on the elephant's back and I felt slightly sick because of the smell of the elephant dung! When we got to the top of the hill we had 19 photos taken by Ali Baba which Daddy bought very cheaply. I can't wait to show my friends and family the photos of me on an elephant. 

Amy x

Watching birds isn't really my thing but the Keoladeo National Park is reputed to be one of the best bird sanctuaries in the World: it seemed worth a day's exploration. It's a very good place to escape the masses of people in the big cities (Agra, Delhi) and to be able to wander around, or cycle, is just wonderful.

Today we spent eight hours, with a guide, spotting birds and looking for a nice big Indian Rock Python to take a photo of.  We found one quite soon after feeding turtles and Macaque monkeys are the Hindu temple in the park.

If you listen to what people say about the place you HAVE to get there very early to see any activity at all. We arrived at 10am and thought we'd only last a couple of hours but the heat wasn't too bad as there was a lovely breeze cooling us down. We saw bird after bird after bird including Ibis(es?), Storks, Owls, Eagles and many, many more. Our guide was very good at spotting and brought along a pair of binoculars and a spotting scope on a tripod for us to use.

Now yesterday at the Taj Mahal I managed to hold myself back and only took 100 photos, but today, I just couldn't help myself and shot a few hundred - they're probably all rubbish but I MUST have got at least one good one. Thanks to the guys in my team at work I took virtually all the photos using my new monopod that they bought me this last Christmas; it was brilliant and I couldn't have done without it.

Unfortunately the Rainbow Cyber Cafe here in sleepy old Bharatpur has done a good job of hiding ths USB slots on the PC so I can't upload any of the images without risking thumbling in the dark and switching the PC off! But keep any eye on the Winchcombe Gallery at www.winchcombe.org/gallery.aspx for some India photos: I'll upload when I can.

We're staying at the Hotel Sunbird, which is really nice albeit quite simple. Food is pretty good at 90 rupees (£1.30) for a nice curry; naans come in at a hefty Rs30 (£0.45).

Tomorrow we're off to Jaipur (3.5 hours by car) to see the Amber Fort and hopefully we'll get to ride an elephant.