This post is for our English readers. Yeah right

In tribute to the greatest Kiwi strap line, we've done a list of Indian contenders should Tui have international expansion in mind:


All vegetables washed in purified water.
Please queue here.
It's hand-made by my family.
I collect foreign coins.
Super-fast broadband connection.
It's 100% silk.
We have no mosquitos here.
We never normally have power-cuts.
That bus isn't running today. (only used by taxi drivers)
I give you best price.


For the English all can be better understood here: Tui's website

Jailsalmer and Johdpur

We're moving along at a healthy pace, not too long left, in fact by the time we've posted this, two days. We're now in Pushkar, about to go to Delhi, but before that we spent two days in Jaisalmer and two either side in Johdpur.
We had some fine desert dust storms, a sacred cow butting incident (the cow is OK), a lot of haveli touring, dinner in a not-completely-dry cow dung restaurant, we visited a fortress that wouldn't disgrace North Wales and finished it all off with some wrestling with the furniture salesmen of Johdpur, after all we hadn't shipped anything on the basis of cubic metres and you're meant to experience everything when travelling, or something like that.
While all this was going on, we had intermittent periods of cajoling and then skulking from our driver, it depended on what we wanted to do and whether that could earn him commision, if it couldn't he wanted us to do what he suggested. All vaguely trying. But we liked him none-the-less and tipped him well.
Back to Jaisalmer, it's built with a honey-coloured sandstone that makes even a pile of rocks look attractive, which is lucky. It was what you'd expect from the Thar desert in early June; lovely, quiet, full of goats and camels, but very hot, in fact we've got a whole post devoted to the signs of excessive heat, but we'll only stick it up if the blog is getting too exciting, so not much chance of seeing it. To sleep, while staying acclimatised, we had to resort to AC, which we set at 30 degrees, a good five degrees cooler than the night, so we don't know what happened to the desert is cold at night thing.
Another side post that may come your way is the study of Indian ear-hair, it's uses and abuses, a much neglected subject - more later perhaps.
Johdpur sported the second totalitarian flight of architectural fancy from an English architect and I can only apologise on behalf of our nation for its ugliness. The first we saw, Lutyen's new Delhi was in the finest grandiose fascist traditions, but the second didn't even manage ascetic beauty, it could have been il Duce's country residence, it was so big, brutal and ugly, not to mention dark inside. Total waste of effort, it's now an outrageously expensive hotel - Mrs B's G&T cost more than our room in town. So on to Pushkar and it's very happy cows.

Udai-poor....... you're allowed to groan

Udaipur gets our vote, the finances took a Rajput War-Elephant of a battering, but the senses were satisfied. Thanks go to Mr Harvey's client in Delhi, who was keen to impress one thing on us 'you have to stay in Kankarwa Haveli' and the man could not have been more right. It was lake-front luxury; three rooms, a terrace over-looking the summer palace, all a perfect blend of the 'new and old' and all for only 20GBP a night - you've got to love the off-season.

The money hit came in the shops, although we may have given a different impression in previous posts we'd planned to do India shopping in Jaipur, but that turned out to be a shopping dud, the result was the morale of Mrs B. suffered, which in turn meant I suffered. Fortunately the shopkeepers of Udaipur rode to the rescue on their curly-eared horses.
We're not going to list purchases (dull for you, traumatic for me), but the various mediums should give a sense of spread: teak, marble, flax, cotton, wool and 'cashmere' (we suspect more wool) - in short no natural resource was spared. The shopkeepers have style, they charmed us, then fed us tea and only after that did they skin us, we thoroughly enjoyed it, but wore ourselves out - in fact it could be offered as a cure for shop-a-holics, it wouldn't surprise us if the end result is a shop-keeper holiday marking the three days the Brewster's were in town.

Udaipur also has tres flash restaurants, the first night we had a tented dinner on beds in a garden, the next a private turret overlooking the lake and we rounded it off in an establishment that wouldn't disgrace central London, where five people beavered away looking after just us, all for the price of a pret lunch - it would be disgraceful, if it wasn't so good (we may have said that before).
Finally we fled the scene of our buying crimes in a car we've taken for eight days to do the western part of the state, so I suppose we're back on honeymoon, rather than honeymission.

Kipling country - Ranthambore & Bundi

Ranthambore National park - ostensibly the home of Shere Khan and Bagheera, yet our jeep safari yielded just one lonely tiger footprint. Accommodation was provided by a former hunting lodge with incredible views over the park, but the lodge is now unfortunately run by the infamous RTDC tourism department so what could have been amazing ended up being a lacklustre version of its former glory or future potential. No doubt some investor will capitalise on the opportunity before too long.

Not to be discouraged by the non-appearance of our (honeymoon-card) car or driver, we set off for Bundi later in the day. The train was delayed by two hours, not necessarily unusual or notable in these parts. The buses on arrival in Kota weren't running either, ditto. TV crew interview of Mr & Mrs Brewster in Kota station about how the lack of transport had affected us - mildly interesting but as we had only been in the place 10 mins with a main objective to leave, we couldn't really pass much comment. Upon reaching the guesthouse in Bundi we were immediately swarmed by Western tourist inhabitants asking; "how did you get here?", "what was the journey like?" Erm - all fine we said, just jumped in a taxi, why? It transpired that they had been stuck there for four days and had heard all road and rail was closed due to Gujjat troubles. Ah. Our travel problems that day started to become understandable.

We decided to ignore the outside issues and concentrate on exploring Bundi which is a lovely town. Kipling apparently wrote part of Kim here, an unsurprising fact once you start to enjoy the (relative) peace of the place.

Bundi palace was one of the most stunning we have seen in India. Clinging on to the side of a mountain and crumbling haphazardly down the sides it shows that the maharajahs really knew how to flash their cash. Incredible courtyards, gardens and murals all over the walls and ceilings. A proper treat. In homage to the release of the new Indiana Jones film, the husband embarked on a remarkable mission through a "secret way" up to the top of a tunnel, which required wading through bat droppings so deep they squelched into his Crocs, and hearing just the whoosh (like a fan he reckoned) of a wall of bats flying just past his head. Not for girls, happily.

Final comments on Bundi relate to our guest house. There is a make of ancient air conditioning unit which we call the Desert Storm. It's about the size of a Mini and is attached to the outside of your room. You have to fill them up with water each day. Anyway the pins on our DS plug broke so we sent for the guy to fix it. Oh no problem, he said, we'll just do it direct and proceeded to strip the cord down to the wires and popped them directly into the socket. As you do.

Next stop U-U-Udaipur.