Jodhpur day 1, Tue 5 Feb 2019

Kids up late after last night’s train, but Jamie said the girl that had the overnight bus slept almost all the day, so we are not too bad. Alan went and bought some oats and long life milk today to make porridge – yippee – as the restaurant only sometimes have porridge and the quality varies. So Becky and Alan enjoyed banana porridge today at the hostel and then went out with Jamie for his breakfast at a local restaurant. That also allows Alan to have a normal instant coffee, hot with no sugar, which at this stage is a real treat.

After booking the bus to Udaipur through the hostel, and enquiring unsuccessfully about horse riding here, we took a Tuk-Tuk to the local palace, which was built during World War 2 as a poverty relief effort by the local maharajah before Indian independence in the art deco style, and whilst designed by a English architect, most of the internal paintings and fit-out were created in India after the originals were sunk by the Germans en route. The palace now serves three purposes as a museum that we saw, a very up-market hotel, and still the maharajah’s residence. The air was clean and the traffic is not a problem here, so it is much more pleasant than Jaipur.

The Maharajah also built a dam in the same period (still the city’s main water supply), led a polo team to England, and established an international airport before Delhi, so he was an interesting character.

We went back to the same restaurant for dinner, and Becky had fries again as she is still a bit sensitive, and Alan had chow-mein off the Chinese menu thinking they would not be as spicy as the Indian food, but that was an incorrect assumption! An early night in the hostel, ready for another easy day tomorrow.

Can’t believe we only have four more days of sight seeing left in India.