India Trip - Day Fourteen - Jaipur & Roopangarh
January 30, 2008

I wake up at 07:30 and get some breakfast and leave at 08:30 to go to the bus station. Our bus leaves at 08:50 and we just make it. Our bus is the basic type and we are all squeezed in.It takes abour two and a half hours to get to our stop we then switch to 4×4 jeeps to take us the rest of the way.

We arrive at Roopangarh Fort by having flowers around our neck and a bracelet on our wrist.

We have some lunch and afterwards I waste no time in exploring the area when the others play cricket. I spend about two hours walking everywhere there is to go following every staircase and alley. I even climb to th top of the towers and have a great view of the whole surrounding area.

At 16:00 we go out for a tour of the local village with someone that works at the hotel. It is such a relief to meet kids that do not want to sell you something or ask for money all these ones want is you to take their picture.

They can actually get quite aggressive over this and push the other kids out of the way to get in front of the lens. I was a bit conscious that my remaining memory card on my camera was slowly depleting so I told the kids I don’t have a still camera only my video camera at which point I would flip the lcd viewfinder forwards so they could see themselves being filmed which they loved.

I had about ten kids follow me when I was doing this; they were all going crazy to see themselves. A bit later we stopped for drinks and I met a man with two wives, and he said he was able to have four if he wanted.

When we got back we all dressed up as Maharajas and had dinner in the big hall and afterwards told stories around the campfire.

We rounded the evening off by going onto the roof and watching the stars, it was the first time that I have seen the stars this whole trip either due to light pollution or clouds. The fort also has a number of coloured lights situated along the top which look good in the darkness.