Hotel Yatrik Jhansi

... I sheepishly asked to change rooms, and was led from one to the other. First, the lights didn't work. Then the toilet was flooded. Then the fan didn't work. I eventually found one that was halfway decent, and set about my day of leisure and contemplation. Being alone so much has left plenty of time for reflection, and that is what I did plenty of today - mostly about the people I've met and what they mean to me. Also about people at home and my ...

... with trains coming and going every few minutes. Typically, the Indians would wait until their train was literally moving out of the station before running in a stampede and hurling themselves aboard at the last minute. The station was superficially clean, but sitting in a quiet area I started to notice the noses of rats peering out of every nook and cranny. When the coast was clear, they'd dash out and grab any morsel they could get their greedy teeth into before ...

... m. Then, at the bus station our driver told us to get on a bus, so, because we were running late, we did. It wasn't the bus that we really should have been on. The Pradesh has a special bus that runs efficiently and is specifically cited by the LP. We watched that bus drive away while the engine on our normal bus refused to start. Then we lurched along for about an hour (though most of the hour was spend not moving, causing Travis to freak out about ...

... are growing more and more used to that. Anyway, I didn't want to stay in the room because without the fan running it was like a sauna. We went to sit outside at the back of the guesthouse where we had a view over the dried out river to the palace and waited for the power to come back. I was talking to a local man that told me Rajasthan was very problematic now. We were planning to go there next so I went in town searching for a newspaper to verify what ...

... giggling we made it to a cluster of sunny rocks which transpired not to be attached to the bigger, central, palace island. The second, more difficult crossing was greatly eased by the help and direction of an elderly man in his pants. T M Livingstone and L A Hillary then bravely mounted the fort walls and trekked around the island's circumference, over the bridge and back to the remote village for a chilled soft drink. Laura Hubbard-Miles Intrepid Explorer Extraordinaire MA Cantab

... faced man with a fresh shave. All he could do was smile and say, "This is not possible." I pleaded with him telling him that I only had 200 rupees (under $5) left in my wallet and this is an emergency situation. He just kept smiling and repeating the same thing. I pointed to the credit card machine behind him and offered him money. He just said it was not possible. I left practically on the verge of frustrated tears. As I walked back to the rickshaw, I had to take deep ...

... overrun by tourists. For some reason, this town attracts gazillions of Koreans. Almost all the restaurants feature imitations of Korean dihes on their menus and some even have Korean signs outside. We saw the odd Korean in Australia and Thailand but here I would estimate that 75% of the tourists are from Korea. They all wear wide-brimmed hats and masses of clothes, in spite of the warm weather, and some of the women even wear white gloves and those ...

... hours after we stopped twice for 30 minutes apiece and of course I arrived in Jhansi in the dark which I'm not too keen on. Rodriguez and the Belgian woman had got off at the Orchha junction. I took an auto rickshaw to a hotel on Station Road called the Hotel Dreamland but there was nothing dreamy about it. The first room they showed mer at Rs350 was dire so I asked for a better one which was better but kinds strange. Weird room with a front room where the bed was and then a ...

... walked back into the village and passed the couple I spoke to at the Jehangir Palace in the morning. They asked if it was worth the walk going to the temple, to which I replied that it was. Carried on walking down to the cenotaphs by the river and passed by two very posh looking resorts - 1 with a fort like wall around it and large posh gates and the other with loads of large satellite dishes on roofs. These places are only a few minutes walk away from where the locals ...