We managed to get ourselves ready to depart the hotel by 5 am and set off with a packed breakfast for the New Delhi train station. New Delhi is a suburb of Delhi. The breakfasts were a sandwich, banana, some pastries and a small juice all in this enormous cardboard cake box.

The streets were relatively empty except for a few dogs and a bit of traffic. You don’t have to obey the traffic lights at that time either. You certainly get a feel for the number of street dwellers as there were blankets and people all over.

We asked Bhagi about the dogs. He says they belong to everyone and get fed. They mostly look healthy enough. They are a breed related to the dingo but much more attractive and are the same all over India.

They are semi wild and not pets to be patted. In the neighbourhoods they function like guard dogs and will bark at anyone or thing out of place that they don’t recognise – at night that is. You do hear them at night but in the day they mainly snooze.

We unloaded from the taxis into a very crowded station and then opted to carry our own packs, day bags and breakfast boxes through the obligatory security screening (they are everywhere – entrances to hotels, many public spaces and stations – and mostly no-one is looking at the screen) and up and over the platforms to await the train.

The train was comfortable. Your bags go overhead and there were 2 seats one side and one on the other. They bring complementary tea, coffee, biscuits, water and rudimentary food (2 vegetable croquettes with 3 or 4 rather miserable fries and the same number of peas. The croquettes were ok). The trains have power points to charge phones etc and it was an interesting trip past mainly rural areas with a lot of yellow flowering mustard seeds.

It was very foggy but that had mostly lifted by the time we got to Jaipur just over 4 hours later.

Now we have a bus which is very comfortable and with plenty of spare seats so we can move around. There are 12 of us on the tour: a family with medical student daughter and highschool son from Melbourne (originally from Sri Lanka); a mother and pre-university daughter with mother’s partner; from north England; a single woman of near my age from Canberra; and us four.

We are staying at the Lemon Tree Hotel which is a modern hotel with lovely large rooms and nice bathrooms.

There is only one hour of internet free per day per room but we had to wait for our room so they have given us free internet for our stay for 4 devices – and it works well.

We had a few hours to chill out. Craig got some lunch and we relaxed and caught up with the world and the blog. We met downstairs at 3pm to start our tour of Jaipur. The bus took us to the old town. It is called the pink city because of the Terra cotta paint that is redone every year.

It was first done in preparation for a visit by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in the 19th century and now is a heritage thing.

We were dropped off into a central street (the old town is a symmetrical grid pattern with walls and gates) and spent the next hour and a half walking about. It was fabulous. Bhagi says you walk across and along the street like you are walking in a park – slowly, and somehow you make your way through.

It was even more chaotic than Hanoi and a bit scarier as you negotiate your way between bikes, autos, trucks, bicycle-carts, buses and cars. So colourful, noisy and a complete sensory overload. Everyone honks all the time just to alert everyone else that they are there. It’s amazing. I’ll let the photos explain.

At one stage we walked a few metres down a side street, where people actually live and it was remarkably quiet and calm.

There are steps up to the rooftop area above the shops every now and then and we went up there for a view and had a local street food delicacy (a type of samosa) and a tiny cup of chai tea. Yum.

People were pretty patient with us basically interrupting their thoroughfare to their daily tasks. Although Bhagi led the way, it was easy to get separated by a few metres and a couple of hundreds people or vehicles and I think everyone appreciated having Craig as a landmark.

One man seemed to be keeping close pace as we crossed this very congested little lane and I was a bit nervous until I realised he was actually clearing a path through the people and vehicles for us to get through. Both men and women seem to be pretty helpful and the men are not so deferential to Mike and Craig as in Delhi.

There is a lot of construction at the intersections, which makes travel even more difficult. They are building new metro stations and they have to go underground in the old town.

After our walk we went to a block printing place where they sell all sorts of cottons and fabrics. The block printing is done with a series of carved wooden blocks overlaid onto cotton to build up an intricate design of up to seven colours.

A bit like potato prints but very detailed and beautiful. I purchased a printed duvet cover that has different colours on each side (muted blues and greys and cream) and feel like I’ve got a hand crafted item.

After that we headed to dinner but stopped to photograph the palace of the winds, which is beautifully lit up. It’s where the king’s wives used to live and is designed to let cool air flow through.

Dinner was at another former palace and was quite a spectacle.

It was all lit up and we sat outside beside braziers and watched local performers dancing and then a puppet show.

All very colourful and enjoyable.

My Indian folk dancing needs work!

The dinner was excellent. We chose some curries and bread and washed it down with Kingfisher beer. They don’t eat much rice in northern India. It is all naan bread and potatoes in various forms. The other staples are peas and carrots. The flavours are divine.

We had one last photo stop on the way home to see the Albert Museum, which is lit up with lots of lights. All very colourful. We were thoroughly exhausted by the time we got home.