well we were so cold we didnt sleep at all and were glad when our taxi arrived to take us to the terminal,there was still a light dusting of snow but nothing to worry about.we arrived at the terminal and check in was open so we checked in with no trouble and found our way to the bar in departures,we were in desperate need of a few coffee and brandys(just to warm us up of course),the time seemed to fly by and our flight was called,we boarded and found our seats and settled in,then we sat and we waited and we sat and we waited and soon an hour had gone by and people were still boarding,we couldn,t understand what was going on,there seemed to be a lot of confusion amongst the passengers and all of a sudden a near fight broke out between 2 passengers and the captain was called.it seemed that a lot of large familys were travelling but hadn,t checked in together and therefore were not seated together,however they were determined to sit together and were sitting werever they wanted no matter what thier ticket number was.hence when other passenger boarded thier seat was tacken by someone else.eventually it was sorted out.during this time the plane was de-iced twice and we thought that at last we would be on our way,but much to our amazement people were still boarding, and we waited and waited and waited.soon 2 1/2 has passed when suddenly the fasten you seat belts came on and an announcment was made by the captain.it turned out they had been waiting for passengers on connecting flights from different places who had been delayed because of bad weather,during this 2 1/2 hrs we were not offered any refreshments or anything which i think is a bit disgusting,but there you go.
well we eventually took off and things seemed to settle down,both had a bit of a snooze and were woken with breakfast,(it was now lunch time},we had prebooked hindi non-veg but were told we had to have 1 non-veg and 1 veg,i still dont know what the point of pre booking was as we had what we were given,have to add there was no drinks service at all during the flight. a couple of hours later i needed to use the loo and found that there was used tiolet tissue littering the floor and the hand basin was overflowing,at no time during the flight was this cleaned up,have to say i doubt if we would ever fly air india again.we eventualy arrived in mumbai and we waited and waited and waited to disembark,we waited 3/4 hour,we eventually got off the plane and made our way through to immigration where everything went ok,,,,we got a pre-paid taxi to the hotel,we didnt think there was any point in going to the hotel actually as we were now 3 1/2 hours late and it was only 6 hrs before check in opened for our flight to jodphur,,we only hoped that the rest of the holiday was not going to follow the same path....little did we know?????more to come later

just wondering,got a few fotos i,d like to share is it ok to put a link on here or do i have to use my media,,,it takes a long time doing 1 photo at a time@

Great reading Valleylady. Fancy Jodphur myself after seeing it on TV the other night, looks as if it would be well worth a visit
PS. Cant believe youre back as well, the holidays just fly by!

Many thanks great report. Yes you can put the photo's in here

Hi valley lady great reading so far,cant wait for the next installment

Great reading. I just hope things got better for you!!

Glad you have started this Valleylady, I was looking forward to reading about all your travels. I'm glad someone else is as slow as me as well at putting their report on. Look forward to reading the rest, sounds interesting.

cheers for the comments guys,,gemma jodhpur was great i,m sure you will like it.

the next 6 hrs went in a flash,we had booked into the new bengal in colva for the night,have to say it wasnt up to much,but becauce we only had a few hours there we had booked 1 of thier cheapest rooms,cheap and basic it was,a double bed, and we had to climb over the luggage to get into it lol, we were due to stay there for 3 nights on our journey back from the north,so we asked to see the room we had booked (supperior)the superior room was great and had a balcony overlooking the main thorough fare.our journey back to the airport took us past dharavi,and just by looking from the outskirts it was quite upsetting,i wasn,t at this stage sure i would be able to do the slum tour we had booked.our flight was uneventful and we were soon in jodhpur.we were quite surprised how clean the streets were on our way to the guesthouse,especially after mumbai.
durag villas guesthouse was a nice surprise, typical rajistan decor with wall hangings and paintings adourning the walls.the owner came out to greet us and showed us to our room which was lovely ,double bed,coffee table ,couple of armchairs,some beautiful cushions etc all in the rajistan style.we dumped our bags and made our way back to the lounge area to meet our friends for a kingfisher or.to our surprise there were no beers in the fridge or a honeybee to be seen,(hadn,t realised it was a dry state,anyway as soon as we asked for beers 1 of the staff got on a bike and came back with 4 bottles, (small ones 150 rupps each),we pointed out that they wouldnt last us long and that we also liked a honetbee or 3 in the evening,so off he went again and came back with a box of kingfisher and a bottle of honeybee,this was more like it,now the holiday was starting or so it seemed.the guesthouse had a board up advertisng jeep safaris to visit the bishnoi tribes,something we had planned to do,so we promptly booked for the next day at 800 rupps each for a 6 hr trip.later in the day we decided to go and have a look at the clock tower area and sader market,an amazing few hours were spent wondering round the narrow alleys and lanes,(still could,nt get a beer anywhere).when we decided to go back to the accom we got 2 rickshaws ans some young boys jumped on the back off ours,(the back of it was open),other half said hold onto your necklace which i did,and low and behold as soon as we did this 1 of the cheeky imps did nothing more than grap o/h,s sunglasses off the top of his head,they all jumped off the rickshaw,as we turned around we could see them laughing in the distance.we both laughed becuace they probaly thought they were reybans or something,o/h had just bought them in the market for 50rupps.post some more later.

hopefully i have done this right for photos http://s1207.photobucket.com/albums/bb480/valleylady1/

I'm looking forward to reading more

Excellent stuff keep it coming I am enjoying this

off to see the match this afternoon guy,s but will try and do a bit more tomorrow,,,come on waaaales

Loving your report so far thanks for sharing

Another good report - thanks.

later that evening we went to a lovely restuarant up in the old town called the kalinga,unfortunatly we don,t have any indian restuarants where we live,plenty of take-aways but no restuarants and this one reminded me of the one,s we did have years ago,the waiters wore white shirt,black trousers and dickie-bows with a white cloth over their arms,the tableware was linen,lovely music playing in the background,the meal itself was probably the best we have had during all our travels.after the meal we had a walk around the town and much to our surprise the locals were stopping us in the street to ask where we were from etc.it was a nice evening.we returned to the guesthouse and had a few honeybees before retiring.
next morning we had a faboulous breakfast of marsala omelletes,had,nt tried them before but had many more on our travels,time had come for the jeep safari and we ventured outside and found not a jeep but an air con car...of we went and travelled down the highway for about an hour and turned onto a dirt track and went on for about 30 minutes,we came to a village when the car stopped and we were shown into a compounded area,here there was a potter at work..this can,t be it we thought,this was just an ordinary village.well we watched the potter for a while and the children come swarming around,we gave them some sweets we had brought with us then we bought a few items and made our way back to the car,no no the driver said and showed us to another area where there was a printer at work,again we had a demonstaration on the technique of printing and how to wrap a turban,we bought a tablecloth.back to the car and another 30 minutes later we stopped again and was told this was a traditional village,it consisted of 3 huts,i don,t know about traditional but they were powererd by solar panels this time it was rug making and again we bought one.off we went and began to wonder when we were going to get the the tribal villages as we had been out and about now for 4 hours.we eventually stopped again and this time it looked a bit more traditional the daughter was milking a(cow?)and the elderly father was were told making opium,we were here about 20 mins and were offered a chai after having look around,it was quite enjoyable.when we got back to the car we were told this was the end of the trip,we then realised that this wasn,t the jeep safari to the thar dessert at all but just a selling../buying trip that the taxi drivers in goa try and get you to do,you know what it,s like,,you come my brotheras shop,you come my sisters restuarant,never mind it was an ok day.we had a nice meal that night at the guesthouse. mind we had quite a few honeybees before hand lol

Great trip report, loving it.

Mike

well we were now on day 3 in jodhpur,we decided that today we were going to visit the merhangarh fort,but before going we asked the staff at the g/h to book our onward train journeys,as they were advertising this service,we gave them a list of the train numbers and times etc,we got a couple of rickshaws and made our way through the old town to the fort,what an expierience the roads were jam packed and many of the locals gave as a wave as we passed,when we were stood still in the jams many of them who had young children came up to the rickshaw and reached thier childs hand inside to touch us,we felt humbled but also like royalty.
the fort itself was fantastic,300rupps each to get in but this included a headphone and remote control each,,each different part of the fort was numbered and when you got to it you pressed the same number on the remote and you got a running commantery,we spent a few hours at the fort and really enjoyed it the views from the upper parts over the city and palace were amazing,this was definately the highlight of our stay in jodhpur,on the way back to the guesthouse we asked the driver were we could get some beers as in the 3 days here we hadn,t been able to get any.exept at the g/h, the driver duly took us to a beer shop and indeed they stocked everything you could think of,,,we stocked up on beers 150 rupps small bottle and a litre of honeybee 200rupps as we knew that our next stop jaipur was a dry state. we made our way back to the g/h where we were given all the train tickets . and the staff saw that we had brought beers etc back with us,to our surprise they showed us to the roof top terrace,brought a few glasses and a bucket of ice,within about 10 mins the staff had joined us and a great time was had by all.i hasn,t to add the beers and honeybee didnt make it to jaipur. . i have added some photos of the fort to my previous link..

we arose early next morning to get to the station for our first ever train journey in india,we arrived at the station at 9 am and were bombarded by porters,i had read they are a bit of a rip off so o/h and me walked past mainly ignoring them but friends let them carry their bags,and a rip off it was,they tried to charge them 200 ruppees for each bag,man friend was pretty annoyed to say the least,they eventually went away with 50 rupps for each bag,a short while later another porter arrived and asked to see our tickets,,,ahhh he said not confirmed,we didnt have a clue what he was on about,he sais we didnt have seats on the train and to go to ticket desk,it was now 20 mins before the train was to leave so off friend and myself went ,to find out what it is all about, we joined the shortest queue and when we got to the front people kept pushing in front after this happened about 5 times my friend pushed the next person who queue jumped out of the way and screamed get to the back,the look on the ladies face was amazing,i dont think she could quite believe that it had happened.handed our tickets over to be told we had to go to enquiries,(after all that),went to the right desk to be told wrong building,only had 10 mins left now before train went,,legged it to the next building to be greeted by a lady with bottle bottem specks,she held the tickers to her nose but still coulndt see them,so we had to wait for someone else to come,eventually a man came got on his computer and wrote some numbers on the tickets,the seats were now confirmed,,,i still don.,t understand this system,,,how can the you pay for seats on a train ,then be told you dont have seats,,, made it back to where o/hs were with 2 mins to spare,,,the journey itself was uneventful,till a guy selling food game round,it was served on a plastic type thali plate,the meal was deliocious,we had just finished when the man was making his way back up the carriage,what shall we do with the rubbish we asked,throw out window he said,we were gobsmacked and refused to ,it,s ok he said,make jobs for local children,i assume he meant that kids would pick the rubbish and sell it.we still refused but he took the bags off us and did it himself..have to say we were disgusted......an hour later we were in jaipur.