Meet the Team
Rat infestation:
Nasty spinning wheel accident:
Measure of success
Arrival in Jaisalmer with intact bottoms.
S
Delhi was going through a cold snap during our visit - so New Years Eve was a chilly 2 degrees at midnight. Brrr. We toured the usual tourist sights but have possibly been spoiled by seeing so many amazing forts already - however the Qutb Minar (above) was impressive and the great Muslim chicken and mutton restaurants in the bazaars of Old Delhi saw us cruising there for meat about 3 times in 3 days. The meat was very fresh - check out the pile of goats' heads in the box on the right..
For about half an hour, crowds on either side of the border cheer for their side as each set of border guards huff and puff and high-kick their way up and down no-mans land before throwing the border gates open and lowering their flags. It was surreal to have the crowds so close to each other - below is the view of the Indian border gate from our seat - the crowd and land you can see beyond it are Pakistani.
From Agra we headed for New Delhi via the eastern side of Rajasthan, getting a taste for what we hope to explore in more depth on the western side - forts, camels and the desert.
Tempted by the desert around Pushkar (home to the world's largest camel fair each November) we did a short sunset camel trek - just enough to wet our appetites for something more extensive in the west.
Surprisingly we also came across a couple of great national parks (Ranthambore and Keoladeo) and went in search of tigers and pythons (respectively). The tiger hunt was unsuccessful although the footprint below was spotted.
The python hunt was markedly more succesful, maybe because we were on foot and bikes rather than in a jeep.
Being on foot isn't that threatening when all you spot are parrots in the trees ...
but is slightly more heart quickening when it is a jackal or python that is only a few metres away (it's amazing how fast the latter move).
We stayed in a room with a great view - a balcony overlooking the river and the riverside ghats that run about 5km along the Ganges' western side. Beggars, pilgrims, cows, holy men, tourists, dogs and goats all intermingle freely along the side of the river.
There are 2 main 'burning ghats' in Varanasi where you can watch cremations before the remains are dumped into the river (anyone for a swim?) Apparently if you are a child under 10, a pregnant woman or a holy man, your body is taken out into the middle of the river instead, weighted down with stones and thrown overboard. The water also reportedly contains the contents of 30 sewage pipes that discharge directly into the water.
From Varanasi we moved west along the river again to Allahabad, a town that does not see that many foreign tourists - and which does not deserve many. I got groped twice at the train station in the space of half an hour (they were duly punished) and Shaun found himself chanting over some coconuts with a holy man in the middle of a rowboat at the auspicious spot where the Ganges and the Yamuna meet ... (here Shaun is rueing the 100 rupees he paid for his coconut ritual)
It was then on to Agra and that famous building. Despite the fact that foreign tourists are charged 37 times the local price to visit the Taj Mahal, it was still worth it. We got up at a very chilly 5.30am to view the Taj from across the river, and then headed over to explore.
Agra also has some lesser-known (but amazing) buildings from the same era - built by a succession of Mughal emperors during the 16th century. Shaun found the harem quarters of some of the old forts and palaces particularly interesting ...
Courtesy of the massive textbook Shaun is lugging around (as a 'reading book') the Kolkata area was the original base of the East India Company in the early 1700s. There are many colonial style buildings in the centre of town, including the Victoria Memorial (above). Our trusty Lonely Planet describes the colonial centre of Kolkata as a 'testament to the vain glory of empire'. Uh-huh. 
From Darjeeling we had a darkened border crossing into the north of Bangladesh and then made our way by cycle-rickshaw, local bus and rickety train to Dhaka.
The people of Dhaka, all 12 million or so, proved themselves to be incredibly curious about our presence and thought nothing of crowding around us and staring while we ate, shopped (you can never have too many kaftans) or got our beards trimmed (mine at least). 
The separate curtained booths in some restaurants for women (and their male escorts) did give us a place to eat without forty pairs of eyes on every handful - literally - of rice going into the mouth.
Being on the river did mean we could engage in some nature spotting, including the Gangetic Dolphin and a rather laid back crocodile (I got my subservient 'wife' to go and poke it to see if it was in a biting mood before approaching).
