Pushkar Camel Fair is an annual event, held around the time of the Kartik Purnima full moon, which this year fell in early November. Thousands of nomads bring their horses and highly decorated camels from all over Rajasthan to one of the biggest animal markets in India, if not the world. Nothing really can prepare […]

This is a guest post written by Phil, Claire’s dad. I’m flattered to have been asked by DaveB and Claire (aka Squiffy) to write up a blog on our Tiger Safari at Ranthambhore National Park in Rajisthan, India. I just hope I can do it justice. We were several days into our tour of Rajisthan, […]

We splashed-out and hired the hotel’s driver and air-conditioned car for a day, which cost about £15, to take us outside the city limits to visit Jaipur’s Amber Fort, the Monkey Palace and a couple of other places of interest. The Amber Fort, a 16th Century palace was an impressive complex, and an official guide […]

Whilst Dave headed to Goa for his solo adventure, I flew home to visit my family and help my friend Naomi chose a dress for her Vancouver wedding next year. After two weeks in luxury, I was a bit dubious about joining Dave in India. However, my Dad, who visited India in a Land Rover […]

Said to be the best legacy of the British Raj, is the nationwide train network that links almost everywhere to everywhere else. This was no mean feat as India is a vast, vast nation: the Himsagar Express train journey–meaning ‘snow and sea’–runs between Kanyakumari in India’s southernmost state, Tamil Nadu and Jammu Tawi, in Jammu […]

Squiffy’s local environment is really important to her: she’d much rather go hungry and spend the money saved on a decent hotel with a clean room, whereas I’d rather skimp on the hotel room and spend the extra on food and drink. (The more I travel the more I see that more money spent on […]

As you know, we’ve designed this blog to lag behind reality: this means that we can deliver a new story to you every weekday regardless of where we are. There really is so much going on in the world that, in wanting to share with you our experiences, we’ve built up a bit of a […]

Across India, people are celebrating Diwali — the festival of light. Here in Jodhpur, the blue city, I gather that this has been translated over the years to mean that six year-old children let off impossibly loud firecrackers in the impossibly narrow streets; giggling in delight as tourists like me run for cover to lessen […]

Before Squiffy arrives in Jaipur, I’m going west to visit Jodhpur for a little photographic tour. The famous blue city lies in the shadow of Rajasthan’s best preserved mountain fort. I had originally planned to squeeze in a more adventurous trip further west to also include Jaisalmer, an inhabitied desert fort. I decided against this […]

To be honest with you, I got bored with Goa. I thought that I’d spend my fortnight “sans Squiffy” sat on a beach reading books supping Pina Coladas surrounded by girls in grass skirts. In planning this, one thing I forgot is that I’m really not that much of a beach person. Worse, to explore […]