Mumbai to Udaipur

There's a suspiciously big mosquito flying around me as I write this. I hope it's not hungry.

We finally got here, after a long flight with good food but bad films. The Time Traveller's Wife was boring enough to put me to sleep, and that's saying a lot: I don't usually sleep on flights.

We spent the first few days in Mumbai catching up on sleep on an insultingly hard mattress and exploring the massive rambly city that it is. There are some amazing old crumbling buildings - the university, police headquarters, train stations - harking back to colonial times but cut through with stinky, blaring roads. We left the main roads behind to wander around the shadier bazaars and markets which feel more like villages. While there are still plenty of naked children shitting at the side of the road and dusty beggars sleeping on traffic islands, Mumbai is also full of glamorous ladies in skinny jeans and rich folks sipping champagne in air conditioned restaurants.

We set off to Rajasthan after a couple of days. That's an eight hour train through Gujarat to Ahmedabad, then an overnight train to Udaipur. I was looking forward to some good scenery. The friendly lady at the booking office messed up, though - our first journey was booked for the day before, which was just great. With 20 minutes to go, I waited on the platform with the bags while Joe ran off to try to sort it out, being passed from desk to desk. I thought I was going to go into a trance, craning to see all the dark-haired men bobbing up the platform towards me, none of them Joe. But just like in a film, he appeared as the train was rolling away, just in time - we jumped on and resigned ourselves to eight hours' standing in the jam-packed carriage. Our seats, of course, were booked for the previous day. Our flight was eight hours, for god's sake.

Lucky we happened to be crammed in amongst the sweetest, most big-hearted bunch of people ever. They wouldn't have me standing, so a young guy gave me his seat and joined a gaggle of little men around Joe. A bearded fellow next to me pointed out, "Everybody like your husband!" Oh, to be a man in India.

So it wasn't the most relaxing journey but I did get so see some of that lush Gujarati landscape and we made some friends. Soon the train was packed to bursting with passengers, chai sellers worming their way through nonexistent gaps, and a scary eunuch who stomped through demanding cash to avoid curses and pinching our young friends' cheeks.

Udaipur is beautiful, all picturesque buildings and ghats set around a lake and a fairytale palace looming over it all. We headed straight for the rooftop resuaurant in our guesthouse to take it all in and were delighted to observe baby monkeys playing on the roof of the temple opposite - fittingly, a temple to the monkey-god Hanuman. We've got a lovely little room with battenberg-coloured curtains and stained glass lamps and - the best thing - a soft bed. We slept well. The weather here is good too - hot enough in the day but cool at night. Typical Indian traffic though, you risk your life trying to walk anywhere. We even saw a famous person today, Julian Rhind-Tutt of Green Wing fame, floating around like a tall, lion-haired hippy.

I’ve just killed that mosquito.