14 January:
Dawn breaks and Jaipur (the Pink City) kite festival celebration is now in full swing, the serene blue sky is decorated with colourful kites, all the shops are closed and everyone appears to join in the fun, this is not a religious occasion but a most unusual social event like no other we have witnessed.

This year however there were over 10,000 black kites distributed as a tribute to the recent death of the Delhi medical student rape victim.

According to today’s Jaipur Times jounalist Richa Shulka: ‘There is a special attachment associated with this festival as kite flying in this country signifies a free spirit; how good is that! The party continued well into the night in the spirit of ‘lets make some noise with loud music from the roof tops’ culminating with fireworks exploding all over the city.

As for sight seeing, it was just another day, another palace, these included the Jal Mahal (water palace) and the Amber Fort Palace.

The highlight of the day had to be Jantar Mantar, a park complex of surreal astronomical instruments of massive proportions built in the early 18th century, the main attraction being the largest sundial in the world.

Linda being a sundial

Small Sundial

World's largest sundial

Star finding widget

Today we had our first unexpected event, tomorrow we were going to be heading for Jodhpur on the Marudhar Express, this train is however, notorious for being late and a quick online real time check proved the rumour to be correct, sure enough it had been delayed 6hrs but time was on our side, so we hot footed down to the bus station and managed to secure 2 seats on an AC bus to Jodhpur and cancelled our train tickets online.

15 January
News from the darkside of yesterday’s festival, an article from the Times City reported that 9 people were hurt in a stone pelting incident caused by their music being too loud, over 300 birds were admitted to bird hospital with associated kite injuries, many children were injured stepping off roof tops while either flying or chasing kites, they called it Skyfall.

The 7hr bus trip to Jodhpur (The Blue City) was an uneventful journey across an arid region of flat desert/scrub plain, the highlight of the trip was seeing herds of camels grazing in the scrub.
We arrived in Jodhpur at sunset feeling battered but nothing could have prepared us for the senses overload of this town, we sat stunned in the auto-rickshaw as it weaved its way through the narrow ultra congested streets of the old city to our hotel. Our hotel proved to be an oasis of calm away from the impossible to describe mahem we had just experienced.