Jaipur

On our way to Jaipur, there's an anxious moment on the motorway when all the cars, motorbikes, trucks and buses start to come to a grinding halt, then back up (literally) and turn around. It's a matter of seconds before all lanes of traffic are actually coming towards us and weaving through vehicles to leave total chaos in both directions. Our coach backs up too, but thankfully doesn't turn around, but waits – unusually patiently – and after a few minutes we edge forwards as the traffic ahead has all cleared (as it's gone back past us). As we approach the incident we discover it's a restriction in the road caused by a gang of road line painters marking out road humps in the middle of rush hour with the minimal amount of traffic management imaginable.
At Jaipur, we walk a couple of kilometres into the city and visit the observatory - a number of huge sun dials and measuring equipment (none of which we actually understand how they work).
We then visit the City Palace, where almost 5 years ago we brought some paintings from a local artist. Helen has brought a small painting of an elephant he did during our last visit, together with a photo on her ipod and asks if he is still there. This blags us into the whole City Palace complex and we are led by one of the guides into the Arts Market and we meet up with the guy. We sit and chat, have some chai and buy a couple more minatures. On our return walk we go via the Palace of Winds and seem to be offered hundreds if not thousands of scarves, pants, t-shirts, bags etc.
In the evening Helen has a couple of henna tattoos before we go out to celebrate one of the OzBussers (Matt) birthdays. Unfortunately a few of the party are missing as they have had to go to the hospital as Frankie sprained her ankle jumping off a wall the previous evening and returns with her lower leg in a cast.