Week 4

This is Laksmi the elephant at the temple. She baths each morning in the river next to the men and women bathing!!

This is the queens own cool house where in the olden days she could retire when she was too hot!Water would be passed through the pillars to keep the building cool.

Above -This is where the kings favourite 11 elephants were housed.

                                                             Who is this veiled beauty

Duckie quenching her thirst with a fresh coconut

One half of an old temple door that needed elephants to close it-it is made of solid concrete and the two halves are extremely heavy.

The photo does not do it justice but this is a beautiful green stone water tank. Each piece is numbered so when they wanted to clean the tank it could be taken apart.

We went to watch sunset at the Hanuman temple which is reached by climbing 575 steps! Birgit and I are on number 486??

It was worth it for this view.

Duckie finishing her falafel wrap - the best falafels ever made by an Israeli guy in Hampi

Guess what this is?

On our lovely morning stroll. Ravi was the leader and us girls thought we were going on a gentle stroll... many boulders, river crossings later we arrived back to sanity!Thanks Rav!!

Having spent a night on the 'luxury' bus we arrived in Mumbai and chose a room with a view!

We stayed on the road behind the Taj hotel near the Gateway of India.

An amazing sugar cane hut which Ravi went to in 2006-its still going strong.

In front of the famous Taj Mahal hotel by the sea. It was over run by terrorists in 2008

The gateway built in 1911 to comemorate George V vist to India.

We took a ferry to Elephanta Island where there are 5 caves dug out of the rock. The main one has lots of sculptures.

 

They look so young....

Coming back from Elephanta island.

In the evening we headed to Chowpatty Beach where there is a good mix of food stalls, some regulated and some not.

                         Then off to Udaipur.We left Mumbai by executive bus but bailed out after an hour and flew from Mumbai airport to Udaipiur.

 This was a group of women loading the backs of these donkeys with sand

                                Ravi waiting for the bulls to let him pass...........could be some time

                                     We found this backstreet and watched a family doing pottery

 

City palace in Udaipur. Octopussy was filmed outside lake palace

 My new friends

We went to watch sunset up at the top of the mountain. The cable car was awesome

 Sunset looking over lake pichola,Udaipur

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City Palace by night

We arrived in Mt Abu and while having some lunch the cattle came to say hello

Crazy faces in front of the lake at Mt Abu

 Ok so a more normal photo, taken at 7am on the way to our 'luxury' bus!

 Ravi's mum and dad honeymooned here over 50 years ago.

 

This is Ravi's luxury seat - so spacious that he has to turn on his side to sit comfortably!

This appeared to be the queue for the local bus

 

This is the view from our hotel room in Jodhpur. A view of Mehrangarh Fort walls buit in 1459 and added to over the years

A selection of Howdahs, which are the names of the carriages that the Maharaja travelled in. Mostly carried by elephants or men