India Pt 2: There ain't no chapati like an S Club chapati

Very much in the tone of the last post, the stories contained within this blog can come across as an immense amount of complaining and well yeah that is basically what they are. But it is in that loving, hilarious kind of complaining you do, like when your wife continually breaks wind in bed! Enjoy!

We left you as we had just finished our time in the tiny town of Bijapur - our next stop was the not so tiny town of Mumbai which houses around 12 million people! We were originally dreading Mumbai as our minds conjured images of a dust filled shithole, and while certain parts of Mumbai may fit this bill we were completely blown away by the tourist areas of the city. There were parks everywhere, the streets were spotless, the people were friendly and the restaurants were amazing - needless to say, we were both incredibly surprised!

It also turned out that we were spending longer in Mumbai than we had hoped after some logistical shuffling due to a major tourist attraction we were planning to visit just happening to be closed on the only day we would be there... classic India!

Being such a massive international city our first stop was Starbucks for some coffee, cake and free wi-fi. We spent the next few days strolling around the sites of Mumbai. The city itself has a touch more of a European feel to it which made for excellent eating! In between gorging on tacos, cake and waffles we managed to check out the Gateway of India and the immensely impressive Taj Palace Hotel. We took in some culture at the Mumbai City & Price of Wales Museums, ate more waffles and took an adventure to Elephanta Island which was a classic Indian experience.

To get to this island we had to take a ferry which was by no means an eventful one and was relatively easy to organise. We made our way out to the island which houses a series of temples that were carved out of the rock that the island is made of - after a walk around the island it was time to board our ferry back to Mumbai. Everything started off without incident, we found our ferry, it started moving and everyone was happy. We then proceeded to pull up at a port that was not the one we had originally started at, in fact it was an absolute stink pit of a fishing dock in the middle of absolutely no where! Upon asking the "captain" of the vessel where on earth we were we were simply told that there had been a problem without any elaboration as to the specifics of the problem or how to get to where we needed to go... classic India!

The Gateway to India & The Taj Palace Hotel

The world's biggest laundry ghat - 1026 people hand washing clothes

The next stop on our journey was quite the change from Mumbai. As a matter of logistical convenience we found ourselves in Ahmedabad. To be blunt, there wasn't an awful lot going on in Ahmedabad, we jumped on another arm pit reeking, suspension-could-probs-do-with-a-squizz public bus to check out the Akshardham Temple, which from what we could tell was a semi-cultish set up in honour of a rather impressive gentleman who travelled around India performing miracles. On our way home we stopped by an ashram where Mahatma Ghandii set up shop for a few years leading up to the Indian revolution.

Upon departing Ahmedabad we took the cheap, intrepid traveller option and paid $4 for a 6 hour tourist bus to Udaipur which went about as well as you would imagine. The bus picked us up 1 hour late, stopped about 1300 times and instead of taking the advertised 6 hours, it took closer to 9... classic India!

The dreadful bus trip aside, as soon as we arrived in Udaipur we fell in love with the city. It's a small touristy town on the edge of a lake with amazing views and an excellent selection of restaurants which was becoming a must for us! Rajasthan definitely has a different feel to it than the rest of India. We spent a few days lazily strolling around town checking out the City Palace Museum, the Haveli Museum (which contained the world's biggest turban!), the hotel that features in Octopussy and even caught a sunset at the Monsoon Palace! It was also in Udaipur that Tom ate something yet to be identified and proceeded to be unable to be further than 45cm from a toilet at any time for the better part of 2 days. On the plus side, he is now looking quite slim!

A rare couple shot in Udaipur City Palace - also pictured is Tom's hair which controls itself now...

Udaipur Palace - not designed for the husky gent

Haveli Museum - KG in a room full of puppets - spooky!

Udaipur Palace - Tom with the world's largest turban... supposedly

Token picture of a pug at a restaurant in Udaipur

After a slight rearrangement of our plans due to Tom's rather "explosive" illness we had to cancel our plans to visit Pushkar and head straight to Jodhpur and it's incredible Game of Thrones looking fort! Upon arrival in Jodhpur, it was Katherine's turn to play her own Games of Thrones, and by Throne I definitely mean toilet as she was too stricken down with illness. Our 4th wedding anniversary was a memorable one, with Tom still not 100% and Katherine closer to 0%!

Once we were both up and running again it was time to venture out and see some of Jodhpur. Our sole activity for our three days in Jodhpur was a visit to the previously mentioned Mehrangarh Fort. The visit to the fort was amazing, it was absolutely massive and has an incredible history! After a few hours of being outside we were both completely knackered and so returned to our den for some rest.

Mehrangarh Palace - Jodhpur

KG really, really enjoying the audioguide at Mehrangarh Palace

Our next stop was the tourist haven of Jaisalmer! Getting there was quite the adventure, we decided a train would be the way to go for this journey - but it just so happened the train we were after left at the uber-sexy time of 4:50am. We asked our hotel to organise a rickshaw for us but were told that we wouldn't have any issues finding one even at the time of the morning which made sense because whenever we don't need a rickshaw they are everywhere you look ready to pounce on you at the slightest sign of looking lost. So as you have probably guessed, we left our hotel at 4am and crickets... not a single rickshaw or person for that matter to be seen... anywhere! Luckily, after a half hour walk through the dark and deserted streets of Jodhpur we found a rickshaw and made it to the train station in time to find out our train was running 90 minutes late... classic India!

With both of us back firing on all cylinders we arrived in Jaisalmer and packed in as much as we could in the few days we had there. We opened our account with a visit to the Jaisalmer Fort which similar to the one in Jodhpur was absolutely massive and incredibly impressive, the major difference being that people still live in this one! We strolled around the winding streets, looked out over the fortress walls upon the small desert city that was Jaisalmer and then capped it off with a tour of the museum. It was also here that Katherine decided she had enough of being married to Tom and planned to divorce him and marry a German bakery instead; we ended up eating here everyday that we were in Jaisalmer. On our second day we commandeered another scooter for the day - Lil' Sebastian - and visited the royal tombs of Bada Bagh, the creepy deserted village of Khuldara and the informative but slightly wacky Jaisalmer War Museum.

Jaisalmer Fort

KG's submission to next month's Bikes N Babes magazine

Tom wrestling Lil' Sebastian out of a car park

A poorly taken selfie featuring the third member of our travelling party - Tom's beard

It was also in Jaisalmer we went full tourist and embarked on a 2 day camel safari in the desert. We left town at the crack of dawn and had breakfast out in the desert, cooked on a small camp fire by our guide Mula. We were then introduced to our camels - Tom's whip for the day was Johnnie Walker and KG was riding on Lalu. After a 3 hour ride we set up shop for lunch which also turned in to a 4 hour nap in the shade to beat the heat. As it turns out neither of us are destined to be camel jockeys as a week later we are still struggling to walk and KG is convinced that her pelvis has separated! We spent the night literally sleeping under the stars, our bed consisted of a tarp on the sand dunes with some blankets as a mattress with our sleeping bags - it was absolutely incredible, a really cool experience.

KG showing off her photography skills - Johnnie Walker resting up for the big day ahead!

KG chatting with the local dogs during our rest for lunch

Tom being mobbed by sheep during our rest

KG looking very Laurence of Arabia on Bubblegum, the replacement camel

Johnnie Walker stopping for a drinks break - not pictured: Tom's shattered pelvis

A broken man gathering himself after a long day in the saddle

We made our way back to Jaisalmer the following day and checked in to our surprisingly classy guest house where we proceeded to watch English TV and only leaving to visit KG's new spouse, the German bakery - or Jaisalmer's only and surprisingly excellent Korean restaurants.

From here we only have 3 more stops - Jaipur, Agra and Delhi - before we hit Nepal for a month of momos and walking!

The Yeah/Nah Index

This is something a bit different as we try to put some actual content in our blog - the Yeah/Nah Index is simply a Yeah or Nah verdict on whether we would recommend the cities we have visited to other people. Behold!

Mumbai - Yeah (careful of where you stay though - it gets pretty grim, pretty quick)
Ahmedabad - Nahhhhhhh
Udaipur - Defs Yeah
Jodhpur - Yeah
Jaisalmer - Yeah