Umaid Bhawan Palace Jodhpur

The cold light of day reveals what it is like in the other parts of Mumbai, away from the areas where the tourist guesthouses are. My taxi was taking me to the domestic airport. That meant a drive through the suburbs, and although they may not have been the worst slums of Mumbai (which are now Asia's biggest), these streets were definitely abysmal. Former footpaths had been turned into housing of corrugated iron, old wood and plastic, and most certainly far from watertight. In the mornings, k...

So after a tough two days in Jaipur, Rachel and I got the train further west to Jodhpur. Our initially impressions of Jodhpur were right, this was a rather relaxed and quiet city in comparison with other places in Rajasthan. It was late when we arrived so we just got settled into our guesthouse on the first night. The next day we found out that our guesthouse (Saji Sanwri) had an rather impressive rooftop view of the Mehrangarh Fort. We decided to leave the fort for the moment nad head to the...

Coming into this trip we knew that we were going to be seeing two entirely different worlds. We knew we'd see things on the streets that might be foreign, and somewhat difficult for us. We also knew that if any of those things overwhelmed us we would have the luxury of being able to retreat to 5 star accommodations. We were looking forward both to what we might term the difficult(foreign to us) and easy(luxury) aspects of this journey. This afternoon we got a dose of both, but the magnitude o...

Bus journey from Jaisalmer was pretty cramped again - we had two seats reserved but ended up with an Indian lady sharing my seat for the last hour. They cram as many people as they can on the bus - standing or sitting in the aisle, four or more to a sleeping compartment and even on the roof! Not a huge amount to say about Jodhpur really - more temples, a huge fort and probably the most impressive the huge Umaid Bhawan palace (half of which is a luxury hotel and the other half a museum plus re...

Jodhpur is referred to as the Blue City because many of the Brahmin's painted their houses blue a long time ago. These days, many non-Brahmins also live in blue houses partially because they believe that blue is an effective mosquito repellent. The view of the houses from the top of the fort is nice, but not as nice as the guide book makes it look. As I was eating breakfast at my hotel, Tom (from my trip to China) walked in and said hello. I had also ran into him at Humayun's tomb in Delhi. S...

I am learning a lot about India and Indian culture and history, especially from Indirajit. He is an amazing guide - he spent over three years studying tigers in the wild here! He helped explain the different castes of India to me today. This is what I learned: There are four main castes in India, which determines how you should be treated. Of the 1.2 billion people living in India, almost everyone falls into one of these castes. (There are also at least 17 different languages, but Hindi is us...

First, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TALLULAH!!! Lu turned four today (although she is telling everyone she is five) so we are celebrating all day today. This morning we read emails from her friends and family then we headed out for a jeep safari to see wild antelopes and things. We went to a Bishnoi village, where we got in a jeep. The Bishnois are a group of Hindus who follow 29 principles, including protecting animals and also trees. They were the world's first ecologists, and they helped saved the India...