Torrential rain made my slog to the bus stand at 5 a.m. the next morning less fun. I was thoroughly soaked by the time I made it to the Badulla bus, and continued that way until after arriving in Ella around 8 hours later. However, I found the amazing Rainbow Inn guest house, which made things better with sensational home-cooked Sri Lankan food. After generally lazing around and hiding from the rain yesterday, I took the beautiful walk up to “Little Adam’s Peak” today and enjoyed the views of Ella Gap, including the hair-raising roads I’d traveled the day before. The hills and valleys are quite beautiful here, and the weather is cool enough at night to sleep without a fan.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll take the train to Nuwara Eliya (an old hill station and even colder), where I’ll spend a night before moving on to Kandy on my way out of the country.

I stayed in the “Eurostar International” hotel near the Delhi airport — completely clean with a fair price for airport transfers and generally a phenomenal value at Rs. 1430 nett. Nearby was Coco’s, the food counter section of a spotless and well-air-conditioned Korean grocery, where I had a “combo” of mostly-onion veggie pizza and a piece of (American-style) fried chicken.

New Terminal 1D at DEL is a standard new airport terminal, with check-in islands and lines which weren’t so terrible at 5 a.m. I think it’s supposed to be given over exclusively to low-cost carriers after the “real” new domestic terminal is finished, which almost makes the use of bus to plane transfers forgivable.

Flights were fine. In Bangalore’s airport, which was sadly lacking in concessions but otherwise a standard new-ish place, I walked by a Kingfisher sports bar before being offered a can of Kingfisher lager on my Kingfisher flight to Colombo.

I have been enjoying Sri Lanka so far — navigating the roadblocks and literal police state in Colombo can be trying, but the city is much less squalid than I’ve become used to recently. I had a lovely long walk between Galle Face Green and the ocean when I arrived, with cool breezes and cooler rain making me very happy.

I’m now in Galle fort, which is nice enough. One thing I’ve particularly enjoyed about Sri Lanka is that the touts have turned it down several notches from Delhi. I’m planning to make it to the nearby beaches, if it stays nice, and then figure out how to get up through the Hill Country before I leave in the early morning hours of the 25th for Hong Kong via KL.

The next morning, I was the first person to brave the local fort, Taragarh. I beat most of the monkeys to it, too. Great views, and amazing to be the only one enjoying them for the first hour or two. Bundi’s wildlife was nice: in addition to the normal livestock, I saw monkeys (fairly normal, but I’d never seen one steal nan before), brilliant green parrots, and a host of butterflies.

Some of the baoris (stepped wells) in the area were nice, too.

From Bundi I went to Udaipur, called (somewhat wishfully) (by travel writers who’ve had too much bhang lassi) “the Venice of the East.” Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful city from the right angles — especially from the Monsoon Palace, Sajjan Garh, on a hill a few km away — but I don’t know about Venice. The Lake Palace was impressive, although I’m nowhere near being able to afford even the right kind of shirt to think about having a meal there.

On the way to Udaipur I saw the fort at Chittor and felt all six droplets of rain I’ve crossed paths with on this trip. The fort is big, but spread out and wasn’t a particular highlight. Perhaps my memory is colored by having the driver try to rip me off at lunch that day — just as in China, finding the real menu and demanding repricing did the trick, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Between Udaipur and Jodhpur I stopped at Kumbalgarh and Ranakpur. Kumbalgarh was very impressive. I’m finding that I enjoy the views of/from forts far more than what little is left inside them; I guess I have more temple fatigue than fort fatigue. Being able to walk a substantial portion of the ramparts was a plus. The Jain temples at Ranakpur were also quite impressive, even given my temple fatigue — lots of impressive (and quite literally unique) marble carvings.

Jodhpur was a quick stop–just one night. The fort, in addition to being a normally impressive Rajasthani fort, has an excellent group in charge of it, very informative signs/included audioguide, and a well-curated collection of items.

I’m now in Jaisalmer, where I will see the fort and then head out into the desert. Having no great love for either camels or blistering heat, I’m going to forgo the standard camel safari itinerary and drive out to the local dunes tomorrow evening at sunset (after trying to catch the fort, which really does look like a sandcastle as LP claims, in the morning). The camel safari can give me something to aspire to when I finally make it to Morocco.

From here, I’m planning on a full day of driving and two nights in Pushkar, followed by another day’s drive to Delhi and flights to Colombo on the 16th.

Made the standard Jaipur circuit today–Amber and Jaigarh forts, City Palace, the sublime Jantar Mantar psychedelic astronomical garden, and Hawa Mahal. Bundi in the morning.

Later that day, I did pretty well on the transport front–prepaid tuktuk (trishaw, autorickshaw, whatever…) to Humayun’s tomb, tourist-police-assisted metered auto from there to the Gandhi memorial (which I can’t spell from memory, but the one where he was shot and not the one where he was cremated), and not-too-bad auto from there to Connaught Place where I caught the Metro back.

I ran into a London-based Danish financial analyst in my section of the train: we talked for a while about economic doom and decided to split a car and driver when we got to Agra. I also got to get rid of my Oyster card, which had about L 5 left on it after I fled the terrifying queues at the Heathrow Tube ticket windows.

After dropping bags at my guesthouse, we set off for Fatehpur Sikri. The “city” itself was not quite as impressive to me as I’d been led to believe, but the mosque next to it was delightful. The touts there were not: they were easily on par with the best (?) of Delhi’s, except without any shoe-soiling.

The Agra fort was very nice, especially in contrast to the Red Fort in Delhi (which just doesn’t have that much of it left).

The Taj Mahal, despite our heat and exhaustion by the time we reached it, was… the Taj Mahal. There’s a picture to prove that I was there, but this computer doesn’t have any exposed USB ports, so it may have to wait.

I had a fan room at the guest house — terrible mistake. Sweltering. A clever way to increase sales of car travel? Probably. It worked on me — I have an (AIRCON) car and driver for the next 13 days or so.

Set off for Jaipur this morning, arriving around 1:30. Ended up paying for a huge room to get aircon tonight (smaller aircon room tomorrow will average out the price to more what I was looking for, in the Rs. 750 neighborhood). After late lunch, I went out to Nahargarh Fort (which is much more impressive as a lookout than as a fort–it’s been let go). Because almost all of the attractions close by 5 or so, I came back to the hotel afterward. I hope to hit the city hard tomorrow morning.

After Jaipur, it’s looking like Bundi, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer,
Jaipur (again, maybe, to break the trip), Pushkar, and back to Delhi
with a few forts on the way.

My hotel in London was ideally located for the O2 arena and not much else–about 10 minutes’ walk from the nearest tube stop. Somehow, it never rained while I was on that walk. Other than a couple cloudbursts, I managed to time the rain well.

I enjoyed the normal museums but also got to see my first West End show courtesy of the Ms: Arcadia. Enjoyable–I’m told not as funny as some productions, but I didn’t mind seeing it played straight (and playing into my mental biases about England).

I was saved from a middle seat and about a half hour of checkin line at LHR on my way to Dubai, ending up in Exit Class thanks to dumb luck. Emirates’s In-Flight Entertainment is, like Cathay’s, sensational. I probably don’t need to bother mentioning how backward United’s was on a 767.

Caught Frost/Nixon on the flight to Dubai, finally.

Dubai airport is awfully lively at 4 a.m.

Delhi is 9:30 ahead of EDT. No SIM card yet — if I’m going to be ripped off I might as well wait for Rajasthan (I’ll be there longer, and by waiting I’ll avoid roaming charges).

So far in Delhi, I’ve been coping about as well as I expected with touts (not flipping out… yet), about as well as I expected with the heat (dripping, all day), and much worse than I expected with travel agents. I’ve been a bad bargainer and walked out pretty frequently. I really need a hotel-based agent (so I know the transport will show up) I can trust (not trying to shoehorn me into an all-inclusive minivan tour by inflating prices for everything else).

After working on my jetlag, today I’ve managed to see the Red Fort and Jama Masjid (both near my hotel). Tomorrow I’ll probably try for some museums before an overpriced departure for Agra on Monday morning.

Hopefully I can get a lot of sight-seeing done early tomorrow — with no noon day gun to reprimand me, I was suffering the heat with all the mad dogs and Englishmen in Delhi.

I rebooked through Newark (UA 7922) and am now faced with getting there at an unlovely hour. It looks like a combination of the 1 train, the PATH, and either NJT bus 62 or a cab should work out: I’ll have to leave in the next 1:15 or so.