Its only taken 42 days!!!

42 days since I left England to join Sian and Julia in India we finally set up a blog for recording our travel adventures. Better late than never I guess. Well so far we've been round India and I dont think I have all day to write everything thats happened, and about all the places we've been. But in brief, Sian and Julia spent three weeks in Mumbai before I came out as well. In that time they did quite a lot of bollywood and TV stuff, mostly as extras but they did get speaking parts in some, like Sian having to learn a bit of Hindi and picking u a gigllo in 'Mr 100%'. The time in Mumbai for me was short and I only did one movie, we were all Hare Krishnas who have to walk through a scene in 'Bunty or Bubbly'. The girls had made lots of friends before I got there like Polly, who was really cool and it would have been nice if I could have got to know her a bit better as she went back to sunny Richmond. We also met Carly and Trenna, Sam and Syd all of whom we are in touch with still.

It was quite an experience on the set as the crowds are huge making you feel like a celebrity, although the police methods of crowd disbursal are a bit savage, basically involving beating people with sticks till they move.

Away from Bollywood glamour, there is shocking amounts of poverty here and it does make you really think about how lucky we have it in the west. The street children are so cute and Julia took them for food on numerous occasions, they seemed to take a much bigger shine to the girls for some reason.

When Sian and me had recovered from a slightly annoying bout of food poisoning we were ready to leave Mumbai and head off round India, starting with a trip to Udaipur in Rajistan. The trains are really busy but everyone on them is so friendly and will offer you thier food to the point where you're eating even when you've had enough and feel like bursting! This was also the first time I noticed Julia has an amazing ability to sleep anywhere (and I mean anywhere)I thought Sian and myself possessed this skill, but alas no. After about 15 hours we were there.

Udaipur was the setting for the bond film Octopussy (1983) but sadly is not the 'city of three lakes' it used to be as it hasn't rained in 5 years, not that they are interested in conserving water it appears, having fountains running for tourists,to name one sin against water preveservation. It still has the beautiful Lake Palace (kind of big pond palace at the moment) and City Palace and was well worth the visit.

4 days after arriving we board a night bus bound for Pushkar, this bus was ok exept that reading your book is not an option as they will not turn on the reading lights, bad nights sleep it is then!

Once we eventually get to Hotel Om, we are all a bit knackered, so I sleep whle the girls go off exploring. When they come back they have booked a two day camel trek in the desert, which we are all looking forward to. Sian and my first camel trek (Julia has done them in the Sahara) and we manage to be the first people to fall off a camel(according to our experienced guides). I say fall off, we were left hanging from our left ankles when our naughty camel Rama decided he wanted to stop for early lunch. This didnt fit in to our schedule so the guide gave him a bit of a whack on the arse, of course he then starting running resulting in us loseing our balance and off we went. It was very funny and a shame the camera didnt come out quick enough, so no pictorial evidence exists.