Our big journey north continued with a 'sleeper' bus from Goa to Mumbai. Due to the constant beeping horn and extra bumpy road it was near impossible to sleep! In Mumbai we bought train tickets via Ahmedabad to Udaipur in Rajasthan later on in the day so we hung around in Mumbai for a few hours taking advantage of the free wifi in a coffee shop. From the coffee shop we took a taxi to Mumbai central train station, we were informed that the fare should be no more than 100 rupees. So, during our taxi journey the meter suddenly stopped working?! We questioned the driver who was very relaxed
stating hat the meter was working but just not displaying the price. The driver was so nice even offering us air conditioning! And yes, you guessed it, another 5 minutes had passed and we arrived at the train station with the driver demanding 350 rupees! Nice try!! After 10 minutes or so he finally realised he was getting no more than 100 rupees so he accepted and disappeared.
We experienced our first punjab thali in Ahmedabad which was amazing! A mixture of delicious curry's and chapati's it went down a treat. Sometimes it is hard to understand how such great tasting food can cost so little. We managed to catch up on our sleep on our next train to Udaipur. Udaipur was a great stop off point, we took the cable car to the top of the mountain that gave great views of Lake Pichola and the floating palace that featured in Bond's
Octopussy. On our walk back we came across a tree containing monkeys and some small animals that we guessed were chipmucks?! At sunset we took a cruise on the lake for a more close up view of the palace and the surrounding area. We continued with a bit more sightseeing the following day and arranged our overnight bus to Jasailmer.
The 12 hour overnight bus to Jasailmer was hell! The bus was SOOOOO bumpy, I reckon I full on left my seat and was airbourne about 4 different times throughout the journey. It was safe to say I did not get any sleep! We landed on our feet in Jaisalmer with some really cheap accomodation, a free lift and free wifi. We arrived at the hotel around 5 a.m and instantly hit the sack! The next day we booked our overnight camel safari in the Thar Desert. The whole experience was great with only 3 of us in our group. We each had our own camel and rode it into the desert where we spent the night. The
plan was to sleep under the clear night sky to watch all the bright stars. But no, we had to endure a thunder and lightening storm with high winds blowing sand at us. Luckily we had the option to retreat into a small hut for shelter! Although we never got to see bright stars we were treated to regular flashes of lightening which was different but still a great experience. We returned to town the following day and sneaked into a nice hotel to use their swimming pool to kill a bit of time before our next big train journey ... to the capital ... Delhi!
