Route Survey Photos 28/02/2007

Gaily decorated Tata trucks	potters at work at the roadside	the sacred cow wanders freely here, as everywhere
elephants	one of our most memorable hotels, the Lake Palace at Udaipur	the great Jain temple of Ranakpur, a medieval cathedral in intricately carved white marble, visited by few foreign tourists
this is a great 4x4 section, much of it surfaced with roughish crazy paving	perhaps the most magnicent of our hotels is the Umaid Bhawan Palace at Jodhpur, built in the 1920s as the maharajah's work creation scheme at the time of the Great Depression	the holy lake at Pushkar, surrounded by temples and ghats – flights of steps down to the water for ritual immersion – a place of pilgrimage for many Indians still showing evidence of its special place on the old Hippy Trail, man
a fort you can drive up to, up a rough and very steep track – the enthusiastic 4x4 brigade will love this	here we came across this snake charmer, with his cobra and his mongoose	but of course the glory of Agra, and arguably the most beautiful and romantic building in the world, is the Taj Mahal, built as the tomb of an emperor's beloved wife.  It is also one of those places which surpasses one's high expectations, not least because of its sheer scale
Agra Fort, or the Red Fort, was the Moghuls' centre of power	Camel carts on the Agra-Delhi expressway, India's M1	Camel
in Amritsar we take a tuk-tuk from our hotel	Dalhousie hill station	snow on the road
Jalori Pass, highest point of the route	Jingers makes friends at Jalori	Jingers makes friends at Jalori