Sam N Em Do The World 24th November - Delhi

We booked into an expensive hotel at 4:20 am on Monday, for 2 nights in Delhi...mainly asleep. We decided to get out of the city as soon as we could to experience the real country, so grabbed an auto-rickshaw to a Government-approved travel agent. Here we booked up accommodation and transport (including overnight travel in 1st class cabins on trains) for the whole three weeks.

We began in Rajasthan, in a pilgrimage town called "Pushkar", which is very important to Hindus. They also race camels and have a camel fair there, which we just missed. Our hotel was surrounded by mountains and farmland, and we had a swimming pool too!

After 3 nights, we drove to Jaipur ("The Pink City") today and went shopping for textiles within the first hour of being here...Emily's haggling techniques are embarrassing me, I guess I’m more reserved than I believed! We are staying here for a couple of nights - doing Maharajah's forts and palaces tomorrow.

We then go to Agra, and will stay in a hotel opposite the Taj Mahal. After that we’ll grab a train, (it all sounds so quick, but we are spending 9.5 hours on the road to get to many of these places), from Delhi to Varanasi (lots of pilgrims and dead bodies floating in The Ganges...nice!), after having spent 5 days in Dharamsala with The Dalai Lama (if he doesn't run away before we get there). After Varanasi we catch long bus rides to Kathmandu, for the 9th December, and will spend at least 10 days there.

I have never seen so many animals playing with the traffic before. Elephants, camels, Holy cows, wild boar (my favourite), donkeys, dogs, etc. Auto-rickshaws are fantastic fun and have inspired me to set up my own company in Colchester when I return! The people here are so friendly, and colourful, and the food is fantastic (no squits yet!).

Hope you are all well,

Much love

Sam & Emily