What's your name? Bijapur

From Hampi we headed north to a town called Bijapur. I'd sold the visit to the better half of team Brewster on the basis it was on the beaten track and in the same direction as Mumbai; obviously I'd also mentioned the buildings and history bit. Unfortunately when we had to sign into the 'sites', the books showed we were the first non-Indians to visit in six weeks and only the second in two months.

Over the next thirty-six hours our status as 'special' visitors to Bijapur was confirmed by nearly everyone asking our names and where we were from, or better still, if they had their camera with them, taking photos of us with their children. We started to feel how you imagine a minor soap star does when they walk through an edge-of-town shopping centre; vaguely harassed and bemused by so much undeserved attention. All of which lead Mrs B. to conclude, Bijapur may have been in the right direction, but it's not a town much visited by anyone except farm-equipment salesmen.

As I may have cheesily said 'I'll let the buildings do the talking'. Bijapur is a great place to look at lumps of sandstone: there's the second largest dome in the world after St Peters; Mausoleums that inspired the architects of the Taj; a watch tower that looked like the tower of Babel and all of them surrounded by some mighty fine chunks of town wall. Sad as it is to say, it will come as no surprise to readers that these glories may have passed mrs b. by, when asked for contributions to the post on Biajpur, she answered 'you must mention the tomato fry'. It turns out the humble tomato fry had surpassed the combined charms of every dusty edifice left over from three hundred years of independent Sultanate rule.

Meanwhile, Laura and Patrick had headed 400km south to a wildlife reserve and we received the following report, which we thought was worth sharing with you:

'Tusker Trails gets the extra big thumbs up. I saw; ellies, eagles, kingfishers, woodpeckers, mongeese, giant tree squirrels, spotted deer, bison, huge sambar deer, langur monkeys, macac monkeys PLUS tigers, a black panther and a leopard. NOT BAD!.... We broke down next to a bull elephant one day (with huge tusks) and another day we broke down not far from a sleeping tiger and had to get out and push the jeep to start it. Mummy was SCARED!'

The final thing to say on Bijapur is the reaction we've had whenever we've mentioned it to other Indians, nearly universally they've said "where?".