Before Squiffy arrives in Jaipur, I’m going west to visit Jodhpur for a little photographic tour. The famous blue city lies in the shadow of Rajasthan’s best preserved mountain fort. I had originally planned to squeeze in a more adventurous trip further west to also include Jaisalmer, an inhabitied desert fort. I decided against this because I’ve only got four days until Squiffy gets here and two towns with over thirty hours travel is probably a bit ambitous at this stage.

Organising train journeys in India is a bit of a pain in the bum as the locals reserve seats well in advance and most services are generally full before us last-minute backpackers formulate our plans. Indeed, part of the fun in backpacking is staying longer, or shorter, at places without being tied-down to transport but I’m not sure that it’s going to get much traction here. I managed to pre-book one of the few remaining places on the train coming back from Jodhpur to Jaipur in a few days, but had to take to the bus to get to Jodhpur in the first place as the train was all booked-out. (Hope that made sense!)

Being my first long-distance bus trip in India, I deliberately and conservatively chose a “deluxe air-con” bus to get me to where I’m going. There was a fairly smart, European-standard Volvo coach in the bay when I bought the ticket, making clear that I wanted to spend my 7-8 hours on a “bus like that”. What arrived, however, was an entirely different proposition! Having said that, being the start of the Diwali festival, there were only a handful of us on the bus and, in fairness, the driver transported us safely and–unexpectedly–at very reasonable speeds too.