As with any trip away there is a whole bundle of bits and pieces that have to be sorted when you get back. There are also some important discoveries I have made:

1. The cat pissed on the transformer for my main monitor while I was away which promptly exploded when I turned the power back on.
2. I have lost a third of a stone.
3. I’ve got three days left to spend a Bullring gift card and I have no idea whats to spend it on yet.
4. On Demand on Virgin Media is now even more fantastic than before I left the country.
5. Soundboy Rock, the new and highly anticpated album by Groove Armada (highly anticipated by me) is great.
6. Swanny has a job! No, it’s not a lie! Even more surprising is that it’s even more geeky than mine!

The final two days in India were pretty spectacular. After departing Jaipur for Agra (tourist trap hell according to the guide book) we stopped off for a couple of hours at another of India’s previous capital cities, Fattepur Sikri. Eventually abandoned due to a scarcity of water, we weren’t overly impressed with much here.

Thankfully Agra was not too far away, and so we met our next guide, Bilal, who took us to the city fort and spent most of the time asking us trick questions. By the time we got our first glimpse of the world famous Taj Mahal (from a distance) we were far more enthusiastic than we had been looking around at the comparatively plain FS.

Despite the praises I sang of the hotel in Jaipur, Agra managed to turn it up one last notch. This old colonial building, now the Grand Imperial, was built by the ‘Britishers’ as a hotel and has since been refurbished into it’s former glory, if not a little better. Although the resteraunt service was a little slow, the expansive rooms and palatial feel made up for it – even the rooms are named after notable Mughal emperors.

The next morning was a 5am start to catch sunrise at the Taj. Unfortuantely the grounds are locked until 6am, which meant the sun was well and truly risen by the time we made our way to the top of the famous reflective pools that surround the main building.

It really is impossible to put into words how stunning this building is. There is nothing vaguely similar in either western architecture or even colours that competes with the shear planes of Indian marble and the hundreds of thousands of individual precious and semiprecious stones that make up the Taj.

Immaculate, the building shows some signs of discolouration, but this has become less of a problem since all polluting vehicles have been banned from the immediate vicinity of the garden walls in recent years.

Built as a mausoleum to his dead wife, the Mughal emperor who built this entirely symmetrical building fully intended to build a matching ‘inverted-colour’ version on the other side of the river that runs alongside. This all-black construction would have cost considerabley more (black marble not being a local rock) and probably taking another 22 years to complete. His son (killjoy) decided this was just too much, and so locked his spendaholic father up in a specially built prision until his death 8 years later.

It is quite clear how this is one of the more famous wonders of the world.

After Taj Mahal it was a case of breakfast, then a brief stop at a marble factory to watch inlay work being done before taking the long ride back to Delhi.

We spent the afternoon walking around the city-central ‘circus’ of shops and boutiques known as Connaught Place. At one point we even played host to four random Indian English students who just wanted a bit of a chat, which was nice. Unfortunately we ran short of time on trying to catch another Bollywood film though.

Having spent a week in India eating curry every mealtime, it was only appropriate that our final dining out should be at a Chinese. Oh well.

A few hours later and I was on a plane back to the UK via Milan. Sam remains in Delhi for another day until her flight to Malaysia, while I spent the majority of today arranging my transport home from London.

I’ve enjoyed the whole four week break. I’m hoping to get some photos up sooner rather than later and also get some fresh clothes on the go.

It’s going to take couple of days to work through my in-tray.

The old part of Jaipur was painted pink (more a terracotta colour) over 100 years ago for the visit of a prince, and ever since it’s remained that way. We arrived here yesterday from Pushkar where we had an early morning start for a desert camel trek at sunrise.

I’ve never sat on a camel before and it’s not quite like sitting on a horse (getting on and off is a gyroscopic experience too), but Tony (my camel) and Johnny (Sam’s camel) didn’t seem to bothered that we were novices.

It was the second time we have had to break out of a hotel in the early hours before any staff had awoken (due to us forgetting to tell anyone of our plans) but it was worth it and we took three hours to venture out into the surrounding areas and up and down sand dunes before returning to meet Mr Singh and get on our way to Jaipur,

Our hotel in Jaipur took us a little by surprise. AFter doing a few passes of the road we eventually found the place, set back and quiet compared to the noise outside. We had requested our tour agent try and get us into the nicest hotels he could for our money, and despite not being a five star we’ve got marble, arches, a three piece suite and matching four poster bed so we’re not complaining too much.

AFter dumping our stuff we met our next guide who took us to the City Palace, the residence of the royal family and king of Rajastan. A personal friend of the current Windsors & Co., the collections and parallels are inetresting.

Included in the museums and grounds are two vast pure silver urns (used to carry water from the Ganges to Britain for the coronation of Edward VII) that are as high as me and huge carpets the size of houses (so big they no longer can be displayed on the floor).

After a good exploration of the palace, we visited the royal astronomical instruments. The initial reaction to these megaliths is that they were probably built in the 1980’s as some kind of modern art park, but in reality they are over 250 years old and are an incredibley accurate and sophisticated set of marble devices, including the largest (and therefore most accurate sundial in the world) which stands about seven or eight elephants high.

In the evening we came back via a hand-carpet factory before going out for a traditional Rajastani evening. There were all the awkward hallmarks of being a westerner including having to wear a turban (badly) and struggle to eat while sitting on the floor (pins and needles). Sam got henna-ed up on both hands and feet which meant she was walking around like a zombie until this morning when the whole lot could be peeled off.

This morning was a trip over to the Amber Fort (the previous residence of the kings, but abandoned for 250 years) where we took a swift elephant ride (this time in a proper padded saddle box) up to the top of the hill and had a couple of hours of exploration.

This afternoon has been quieter. With another nice pool at the hotel, we’ve taken time to recover from the heat and early starts. Tommorow, Agra.

So things are going much better than we expected. Delhi usually starts travellers off on a torrent of horror stories, but we’ve found a guide and we’re very happy.

We stayed for the last two nights near Connaught Place, central New Delhi and had the great luxury of an air con room (Lucy!). In the morning we were met by our driver (Mr Singh) and our (opinionated) guide.

First stop was Lakshminarayan Temple, a modern Hindu shrine, painted in traditional yellows and oranges and beautifully decorated in marbles. We found this was a reoccuring theme around the city. The next stop was India’s largest mosque which again was sandstone and marble construction. It’s hard to express how impressive this building is but in the 37 degree heat of Delhi in the morning and with a pale yellow sky the whole thing is stunning.

Next up was a drive past the Red Fort and bustling Chadni Chowk (like Delhi’s Oxford Street) before heading to Humyans Tomb. This incredibley impressive (awesome in the true sense of the word) was the inspiration for the later built Taj Mahal. Being ‘off-season’, we have had most of these attractions to ourselves. Next were the cremation sites of the major players in India’s history, starting with Ghandi and Nerhu in a beautiful green park. After a drive up to the very colonial presidential palace (past all the shining white ‘Ambassador’ cars which are still diplomatic vehicles) and quick view of India Gate and the administrative district we took lunch before getting back on with the tour.

In the afternoon we visited Qutub Minar, a massive hindi-muslim co-operation in the form of a huge tower that is nearly 1000 years old and set in amongst various other ruins from the time of the Afgan occupation. Finally we were taken around the obligatory Indian export bazaar, but after taking the free drinks and deciding there was nothing we wanted, we ended back at the hotel.

This morning was an early start for the six hour drive out to Pushkar. This holy town is home to the largest camel fair in the world (5000 camels descend upon the towjn in November to be traded) as well as the only Hindu temple in the world dedicated to Lord Brahma. Our hotel has more than exceeded expecations we have a pool, and whatsmore, it’s a pool with a bar in it (shame the town is dry and vegetarian due to the religious significance).

We took an afternoon walk around the holy lake edge and recieved a ritual (expensive) blessing from a holy man. We were warned about this in Lonely Planet, but they really don’t give you much option to refuse. After a little bit of shopping we’re now back at the hotel and contending with power blackouts every five minutes.

This is not a bother to me as the food here (in India) is exquisite and it’s dinner time. I really am loving it all.

It’s taken the best part of two days including another 6 hour journey on the top of a bus, a (wet) border crossing, another four hour bus journey to Gorukpur and then a 20 hour ‘sleeper’ train journey to New Delhi getting here at 5pm today.

We start a tour of ‘the golden triangle’ tomorrow – Delhi, Pushka, Jaipur and Agra before coming back to Delhi. This time around looks like it will be a little more settled than my first visit three weeks ago, although we had some problems with the train tickets yesterday; things seem to be going a little smoother now.

Onwards…

Because Sam was not feeling up to scratch yesterday, I went off around noon to visit the Peace Pagoda (1100m) and Damside on foot. The walk is a few km, and I accidently acquirred a guide very quickly who took me to the top and back down, fending off cows, leeches and snakes en route. By the time I got back down to the bottom I chose the more relaxing boat trip across Phewa Tal to Lakeside where we are staying. By this time Sam had recovered so we went to watch “Into Thin Air” while food was served.

This morning was our last proper one in Pokhara, so we spent it in style, paragliding over Sarangkot and the town. An absolutely fantastic experience, I managed to get some very decent photos (which will be uploaded soon, hopefully).

Following in the same “extreme sports” vein, we took a taxi to the local bat caves and after hiring another guide, found that the whole thing was unlit, uneven, and untouched. The Rough Guide says you can climb out through a small opening if you feel adventurous enough, and so we did. Covered in dust and bat droppings, we moved onto the next destination – the Gourkha (Gurkha) museum. An impressive collection of uniforms and stories kept us busy for another couple of hours before heading back to lakeside via a Tibetan monastary and Devi’s Falls.

Named after a tourist who fell to her death there in 1992, Devi’s falls drops 100m underground and all you can see from the surface is a thin canyon carved in the soft rock. While trying to retrive the body a large number of caves were found underneath and a shrine has been established. The whole thing floods during monsoon which is about 2 weeks away, so we were here at the right time.

Because of a technical problem with Royal Nepal Airlines we have had to take the bus then train to Delhi where we are taking a brief tour of North India. With temperatures around 47/48 degrees celcius, this may be an interesting week…

Yesterday was a lazy day. Pokhara is laid back, clean and quiet and we had planned to have a late start then go off for a row around Phewa Tal, Nepal’s second largest lake; but we ended up spending most of the day trying to arrange the week we have in India, so the lake has been put on hold.

This morning we got up at 4am to watch sunrise in Sangakot, but when we got up we discovered firstly that our taxi driver hadn’t turned up, and secondly that the weather was bad so there wouldn’t be much view of the Annapurnas anyway. We went back to sleep for a few hours. Unfortunately in another bad twist of fate, Sam appears to have acquired some bug overnight (it happens from time to time due to westerner’s non-resistances) and so we’re waiting to see whether our original plans for today go ahead.

Today can only get better…