Mumbai (Bombay)
We knew before we even set foot in Mumbai that it was going to be expensive (‘the most expensive city in India’ title gives that one away!), but we assumed the accommodation would be of a better standard, one thing we have to stop doing is assuming – rooms 6 times more expensive than what we’re used to were horrible… But there’s not much you can do when they’re all the same!

One of the ‘must do’s’ of Mumbai is try and get yourself an extra part in a Bollywood movie, and as we are extremely fabulous, within 1 hour of being there we were asked to be in a film called Baabul (no idea what that means but there was a big name Bollywood guy in it, not that we were told that, we saw him on a billboard on the way home!), so after putting our bags in our room we were taken to Film City with all the other backpackers trying to earn some cash for a days work.

When we arrived we all got to choose an outfit, they were all pretty damn bad so we just took what was nearest. I didn’t come out of it too bad, a simple black dress, very tame considering some of the other choices! Poor Jon had to wear ‘Indian Boy’ jeans – basically they are girls jeans that are far too tight but every young lad out here seems to own a pair! We were given one job – dance and look happy (you can imagine Jon’s reaction to that!) After dancing like idiots for about 6 hours we were getting a little bored and very tired, the general consensus was this wasn’t worth the money and everyone wanted to go home. Luckily the shooting seemed to have gone well and before we all collapsed, only just, they let us all go!

Unless they cut the whole scene from the movie I am guaranteed a spot as they kept moving me and another girl around so that we were always on view – handled it like a pro I might add, only took the p**s a few times, unlike the guy next to us who broke out into MC Hammer and The Robot dancing style, too funny for words so I guess you had to see it. So folks, watch out for the next Bollywood stars gracing your screen, we’ll be in cinemas in 6 months!!!

After the whirlwind of Bollywood we pretty much did nothing apart from walking round hoping we weren’t getting lost. Went to The Gateway of India, a few art galleries (shocking what can get into a Modern Art Gallery out here by the way), walked around the University, drove past Chowpatty Beach and went to Crawford Market where we were attacked by crazy people wanting to have their picture taken (see below…)

That pretty much sums up Mumbai, a brief stop which was mainly to buy a camera lens, and some fun stories that happened along the way.

Jodhpur
After possibly the most uncomfortable 19 hour train journey yet, we arrived, found a cheap room by about 9am and slept for the remainder of the day! When we were in Goa a lady told us that Rajasthan was already too hot but we thought she was just being a wimp, it turns out she was spot on. You can’t move here because it’s constant dry heat averaging about 40 degrees in the shade – not pleasant, our plans have changed a little because of this, the new plan is to get the hell out of Rajasthan quickly and head to the highlands as soon as possible as it’s only about 20 degrees there!!!

Jodhpur is a maze of blue building and narrow alleyways, filled of course with hundreds of smelly cows and their waste! Possibly the strangest thing we found was outside the market, an omelette shop with a somewhat crazy owner who made you write in his guestbook whenever you had some food, and these guestbook’s spanned over about 4 years! The Fort, being the main reason for going to Jodhpur, looked absolutely amazing, a huge building sat on top of a massive hill surrounded by all of the blue houses.

As the Fort looked so good from our guesthouse we decided to take a trip up there – but by the time we had gone through the trauma of getting our train tickets in the morning it was midday and the heat was unbearable, but not being sensible we went up anyway (oops), and funnily enough it was even hotter once we got there. Inside the Fort was nowhere near as impressive as it was just looking at it for free from the ground, but it would have been one of those – what if was amazing etc?!

Basically it was too hot, most backpackers/tourists have gone home or left India by now for good reasons, so we spent the rest of our time finding shade or catching up on much needed sleep! Jaisalmer was meant to be our next stop but quite frankly no-one wants to do a camel safari in this heat, it’s just not worth it so we headed off on the bus to the holy city of Pushkar.

Pushkar
Just so you guys fully understand, IT IS TOO HOT. When we dragged ourselves off the bus we loaded our bags onto one of the carts waiting to take you into the centre (no rickshaws allowed…) and just as we set off walking the guy said I could sit on it too – how fabulous, no walking in stupid heat, just getting pushed to our guesthouse – yay!

The main reason for going to the city is the holy lake (filled with Ghandi’s ashes and Gods appear here in various forms…), so loaded with rose petals we wandered off to go and make a sort of blessing. It would have been quite straight forward if it wasn’t for all of the ‘priests’ trying to help us with our task, eventually giving in and having to make a ‘donation’ we were fully blessed and our families were blessed too – hope you guys are feeling the blessing, you cost us a whopping 100 rupees! (£1 something…)

Apart from the usual beggars there were more things to avoid here – monkeys… We were headed up to a café for some food and were abruptly stopped by a massive monkey sat on the steps. Me being a wimp made poor Jon go first and I’m glad I did, if the same happened to me I would have screamed pretty loud – He started walking up the steps and the EVIL monkey sat up, half leapt towards him and growled baring his nasty big pointy teeth. Fearing for our lives (he he) we did one sharpish and waited until the ‘spawn of Satan’ had gone!

Electricity is very erratic here, the town’s supply disappears every couple of hours or so and no-one knows when it’ll be back on – not good at night when it’s still really hot in the rooms. One couple had the great idea of buying the innards of a tent (basically a giant mosquito net) and sleeping on the roof in the lovely cold night air, very jealous…

After about a week of doing pretty much nothing it was time to head to Agra for Jon’s birthday and our first ‘Wonder of the World’, the Taj Mahal.

Agra
Agra itself is pretty dull; the only thing here is the Taj and a good noodle shop!

For Jon’s birthday we were going to stay somewhere fancy and have a luxurious day, but after some research we found out luxury doesn’t exist in Agra! We set off to the Taj only to find it was shut for a few hours as an American VIP had turned up, so after debating what to do for a while we got a man-powered (literally) rickshaw to the back view of the Taj and messed around in what is usually a river (as we were there it decided to dry up!), got really hot and went back to pay the 37.5 times more fee (750 compared to their 20…) than locals to se the Taj close up, but not before getting searched and having items removed (they thought we were going to blow up the Taj with a clock, torch and an I-Pod?!).

All in all Jon had a great birthday and seeing the Taj Mahal (again for him) wasn’t the worst thing to do on your birthday!!!

Varanasi
This was one of the places we were most looking forward to and unfortunately was one of the places we disliked (note using polite language) the most…

In fairness, we are in the off-season at the mo as everywhere is too hot, so no-one is in Varanasi apart from the dead people burning by the Ghats!!! (Seriously, they have open cremations and throw the ashes into the Ganges when they’re all crispy!). We watched a few cremations, sounds morbid but it’s really fascinating, well OK it is morbid too! It’s one of those things you don’t expect to see and being able to watch the skin melt off someone is quite an experience believe it or not! Surprisingly it didn’t smell, even when there were 5 on the go, we thought it would, so there you go!

One of the apparent ‘must do’s’ is a sunrise boat trips on the Ganges, but just as luck would have it, a lot of the Ganges has dried up and the morning we did the trip it was really cloudy and so we didn’t really notice the sunrise! We did see someone meditating in the river who didn’t move for ages (got a piccie for you!).

We caught up with a guy that we met when we climbed Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka who suggested going on a day trip to Sarnath (a nice way to escape Varanasi for a day apparently!) so we took his advice and off we went. It was a really nice day and eerily calm in comparison to the dirt and noise of nearby Varanasi. We spent a couple of hours walking around, saw some monkeys, fed some spotted deer carrots (!) and walked around a lovely (air conditioned) museum with loads of ancient statues which were pretty cool (quite literally with that air-con blasting, was chilly in there!!).

It seems that at the minute we’re always tired so spent the remainder of the time sleeping – think nearly 3 months of being away is taking its toll and we just need to re-adjust and then get on with it – we think we’ll get better when we get to the Hills where it’s not oven temperature!

Kolkata (Calcutta)
Nothing more than a stop before our train to Darjeeling and a good place to download masses as the internet is 15 rupees an hour (20p) – we will be back up-to-date with Lost in about 1 week (he he).

For those of you who knew our rough plan; we are still planning on going to Nepal in about 3 weeks – hopefully it will have calmed down by then, we can always stay in India a few more days to see how it goes but we will definitely be in Nepal by the 12th May, no choice I’m afraid… The King is planning on giving another talk (after the good the last one did!) which may settle the country but only time will tell. Tourists are still well looked after as long as they don’t start breaking curfews and joining in protests, so we’ll be fine. Just thought we’d update you on that so you all know where we’ll be so you won’t be worried!