That night we slept under stars with roaming camels and beetles the size of a 50p, either crawling around us or flying directly towards us.

15th March 2007

The next morning we woke at 6am, with the nights sky slowly growing lighter, and with a slight chill in the air. We emerged from our sleeping bags and took our freshly brewed cup of chi to the sand dunes in time for the desert sunrise. Our friends that we had met on the camel safari, Sabrina and Mark (from Atherton) joined us for the sunset.

The sun had reached the high sky above the sand dunes and our bellies were rumbling for food, so we strolled back to camp to find a breakfast of boiled eggs, toast, jam and peanut butter was waiting for us. The food on the camel safari was far better than anticipated.

The camels were loaded up and off we set at 8.30am, check out time from the desert!! Andrea and Michael lead the way, with Mr. Singh on riding along with Andrea, controlling the camel whilst the speed increase and we were no longer slowly trotting.

One hour later we arrived back to the starting point and sadly said farewell to our camels and guides, and headed back to Jaisalmer in the four wheel drive.

Later that day we took a bus (sleeper) to Ajmer, which is the closest town to Pushkar, our next destination.

16th March 2007

We arrived in Ajmer at 4am and were bombarded with auto rickshaw drivers insisting on taking us to Pushkar. To avoid anymore hassle we joined two guys and a girl from Germany. We all decided to take an auto rickshaw to Ajmer bus station and wait for the bus to Pushkar and save ourselves 300 rs. As we arrived with no-where to stay in Pushkar, the Germans insisted that we join them on a walk to the guest house they would be staying at in search of a spare room being available. To our delight a room was available and at a great price it was hard to resist. The hotel was called Hari House (Hotel Pushkar) and was ran by a local priest who now lived in Switzerland and took a three holiday each year to Pushkar, only to meet up with his friends.

After a couple of hours sleep we took a stroll round Pushkar, with monkeys roaming freely, along with cows, goats, dogs etc. Just in time for sunset we sat on the steps around the Ghats listening to a band and watching hippies juggling and entertain the crowd, it was like a hippy festival, all probably high on bhang lassi!!

Pushkar is a small chilled out hippy village and great to relax and do nothing but wonder round the shops.

17th March 2007 (Pushkar - Jaipur)

After completing our visit to Pushkar we decided to take the 3.50pm train to Jaipur. This was a luxury train with leather seats and provided us with water and tea on the journey.
Two hours later we arrived in Jaipur, and took a rickshaw to Ashiyana Guest House, only to find it was dark and dingy with lots of building work taking place and a room the size of a prison cell.

Hot, tired and hungry we visited a couple more hotels, before stumbling on the Pink Sun, with a restaurant (Kothi) attached it was perfect and only 200 ps per night for two of us.
Our bellies were full and we were ready to take a walk round Jaipur. Ten minutes walk from the hotel, we passed the Raj Mandir cinema, which is said to be the best cinema in India. It is a Meringue shape, clean and well lit. The showing for this evening was a film called 'VIVAH', which had great reviews, so we queued up in the ladies queue and bought our ticket for the 9.30pm showing.
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