A horrible hangover to start things off...
"Sir, would you like a whiskey? And a beer? How many? 4? More?"
We indulged pretty heavily on the free drinks on the plane to Delhi last night. Waking up in Delhi with a pounding headache, and a quick change over for Jodhpur wasn't too fun. Worse still was the turbulent flight. We arrived in Jodhpur and James had to use the local toilet straight away(!)
We took a tuktuk from the airport. "Where you go?" We just said "urm centre of town". The driver took that literally and we were dumped in the middle of a road, bang in the middle of Jodhpur! What followed was an attack of all senses. Smells: filth, sewage, spices, fresh veg, exhausts. Sounds: "nice tattoo!", horns EVERYWHERE, traffic, bustling locals. Sights: everything is dirty & dusty, vibrantly coloured fabrics, locals staring from all directions.
We strolled around, sweating, mesmerised, lost. Somehow we got vague directions to "train", which we soon learned was out of tickets to Jaisalmer...
...But this is India where anything is possible for a price. A guy called Sharma found us and took us to his so called travel shop. We had our 1st chai and he proceeded to try and sell us opium and hash. Hours passed, and our hangovers faded. Sharma eventually got his equally dodgy mate to print what looked like fake train tickets for us. They then tried taking us to the best place in Jodhpur for dinner - ***bollocks***! Flies everywhere, nothing fresh, smells of sewage on the floor all around the seating area. Our choice was much better, a swanky hotel with a/c to eat a delicious curry and we washed in a sink.
Then 3 hours of waiting in the 1st class lounge which smelled of fresh crap. Poorer customers slept on the stone floor in the lobby. Our train pulled in at 23.45 and we got comfortable pretty quickly in a train absolutely jam-packed with Indians - our ticket *appeared* to be valid but everyone including the ticket inspector seemed more interested in there being two random white guys on a train with them. We slept like a squashed mosquito in a fridge - the a/c was on max and we huddled our bags thinking people might steal something. We soon learnt Indian people just wouldn't do that.
