In June/July 2010 I spent ten days travelling in Rajasthan, India with friends; this is my diary of the trip (full list of entries here).

Today, we drove back as far as Jodhpur, where we dismissed our driver at the airport; there was a slight argument as he tried to gouge us for a bigger fee than originally agreed, but having a native speaker with us put a stop to that.

We caught an internal flight south to Udaipur, southern Rajasthan; this was definitely the smallest plane I'd ever been on (two seats either side of the aisle). It was diverted to Ahmadabad owing to bad weather over the landing strip at Udaipur (anxious moments - we hadn't b0thered with malaria medication as we weren't supposed to be going outside the low-risk zone), but we eventually hit the tarmac in Udaipur just in time to catch a taxi into town before the gathering storm broke.

From the taxi, we watched the wind blowing the debris from the side of the road everywhere, before locating a cheap and cheerful hotel. By this point it was raining heavily, with the temperature down to a blessedly manageable 30 degrees (but the humidity way up).

A decent dinner by candlelight (owing to the storm having knocked out the power) - definitely the oddest setting in which I'll ever recount how I once met the Queen - then bed.