Hotel Bhanwar Niwas Bikaner

... sat us all down on the terrace after we arrived back from dinner to perform a spectacular firework display within feet of our feet! Patting Aidan on the head & constantly saying “Good boy”. Oh I forgot this is after drinking a bottle of local scotch with his mate. He didn’t understand when I asked him if he knew that “you should never go back to a lit firework” clearly the British firework code of practice advertising back in the 80’s stayed in the ...

... way works when avoided rats in a rat-filled hallway.<br> <br>(an interesting side note, is that Deshnok is encircled by a huge desert, so the rats that live there haven't had a lot of genetic variation in their life as a colony. About half have a characteristic tumor-like growth coming off their ass. Now I'm no genetics expert, nor am I an expert on rats, but it seems that quite a few of the rats have quite an issue with inbreeding) <br><br>

... crammed in the back of a tuk-tuk back to town was interrupted only by some type of weird cattle roadkill skinning operation. We stopped, photoed and still holding our breath and hoping to soon wash our feet, raced--at an alarmingly slow rate--home. Nothing builds an appetite like roadkill and rat poop, so we went back to a street vendor for the best Masala Dosas in India and got ready for one of the worst bus ride in history.

... on the itinerary - but not doing justice to the years-old colorful images that have been preserved over time. Apparently some of the buildings are now privately owned, so we first went into someone's house (they charge, of course) to look at their room full of pictures and mirrors, and then we went to another house, kind of like a museum, but looked after by this "70-plus" year old man who put his turban on when he saw us coming up the ...

Lundi 5 janvier 2009 Arrivée a Dehli le dimanche 4 janvier à 6h10 comme prévu. J ai attendu Guillaume (avec qui j avais conversé sur voyageforum.com avant le départ) à l'aéroport et ne le voyant pas arriver je suis partie en tuc tuc jusque Pahargang dans le main bazar, le quartier des backpakers. Je m attendais à plus de surprise...finalement le bordel des rues est assez semblable à l'Amérique centrale évidemment avec des saris indien différents des costumes classiques guat ...

... rooms were hand painted, there were all the photos of trophy kills. But the highlight is going to Karni Mata temple in the morning. In this temple there consider the local rats are reborn story tellers and are worshipped. As a Hindu temple one cannot where shoes, so here we went bear footed (girls wore socks) into a temple with thousands of rats running around. Locals were giving the ...

... just get some clean sheets that fit the frigging bed!!" So funny! We both said it was like sleeping in a museum and that tomorrow morning, there would be tourists walking past our room taking photos of us asleep. The next day was our last day in Bikaner before we headed off to our sleeper train for the Himalayas. So, we visited the fort - a short walk via a death trap road. Stunning Fort. Nuff said. The Hotel transferred us to the train station which was a ...

... At least that is what we think it was. We had lunch at the hotel and the food wasn't very good - definitely the worst since we arrived. After lunch we meet up with the tour guide. We first went to Junagarh Fort which was built between 1587-1593 during Rai Singh's rule. This fort is one of the only ones never conquered and there are 2 elephants that sit facing each other by the front gate which indicates that the fort was never ...

... and had never been interested in visiting it anyway), but I still felt okay and was feeling up to the challenge. I had seen a special on the temple on TV so I had an idea of what to expect. Mr. Negi told me to breathe through my mouth. Awesome. The outside was nice enough. But of course, being a Hindu temple I had to REMOVE MY SHOES. So I tried to be a big girl and I took off my shoes and walked to the main building inside. As soon as I got close I saw a ...

... the organic forms rise up from the earth. Often a curved wall extends from the hut to encircle a few cows and sometimes a camel. Inside the houses, shelves are carved from the mud and the walls are decorated with tiny mirrors. The exterior is often painted rust red and decorated with patterns in white. We camped at a different place each night and had fresh curry and chapatis (a type of unleavened bread). The cameliers did the cooking and collected dried camel ...