Jaipur

Off now to Jaipur. Home for the next 2 nights. Long 7 hour bus ride. We stopped on the way at the deserted city of Fatehpur Sikri.

One thing about long day trips you get to know your fellow travellers and see the teeming life of India along the way.

Free afternoon. A walk through a food market. The colours of spices are so much more vivid here. I guess it's because they get them so fresh.

Evening was at "uncle Sam's". Home of a self proclaimed celebrity chef (we'd never heard of him and wondered if he was so famous why he lived in such a modest apartment)

Still the food was delicious so we're not complaining.

On the drive to the amber fort we stopped at looked at the Palace of the Winds. It's lovely but it's just a facade. Makes you wonder why.

Amber Fort next stop. Bit of a climb had us wishing we could make the journey up the hill on elephants, but we were told there was a 45 minute wait. Oh well, the walk did us good.

Lots of touts and hawkers. One little scene saw us witness police come tramping in armed with rattans, shields and helmets to remove them. One lad saw them coming, deftly tucked his postcards under his shirt, turned on his heel and marched briskly out. We thought it was overkill. And one of the Muslin caretakers wasn't impressed either. He raced out,waving his arms about and loudly gave them what for. They then rather sheepishly went back out the gate and removed their boots and re-entered. Somehow they didn't quite have the same authority in their socks.

Moustaches are a bit of a thing in Rajistan and we saw some impressive ones. One old boy Saw Mick's face fungus, nodded approvingly and shook his hand!

After lunch a visit to a place selling jewellery. I refrained . Bern wasn't so strong. Then a textile place. Bern and I had a go at block printing. The professionals have nothing to fear from us.

Spent more,than I'd intended as there were some stunning things there. They offered drinks including rum and coke. We thought they were kidding but not so. Bern got a bit excited over that. There is a photo somewhere called women shopping and it show Mick, Eric and Adam sitting in a row with rums in hand looking rather bored. At least they had the rum to console them and their credit cards.

A Bollywood movie was next. The Raj Mandia cinema has a capacity of 1200 and is rather lavishly decorated in a sort Art Deco revival style. The movie was A comedy. Just enough English words scattered in to give us the gist.

Some of us left at interval in Favour of food. A few dodgy tummies by this stage. I blame the stuffed chilli. I'm not sure,the choice of Dominos was a good idea though.