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).

The morning after our camel ride, we woke up on our camp beds in the desert, feeling surprisingly refreshed.

After breakfasting on bananas and cake, we set off back to the city on our camels. We galloped the last quarter of a mile, much to my dismay as I bounced up and down in the saddle and kept landing heavily on my gentleman's area.

We were then dropped off at the hotel, promising to come in to Mr Dessert's office in town later to sign his testimonials book (which we didn't. Apologies if you're reading this, Mr D, but comfort yourself with the thought that I'm hearby recommending you unreservedly to my global readership of two and a half).

We had a nice lazy day at the hotel by the pool (apparently droughts aren't a good enough reason to upset the handful of tourists wanting a swim), enjoying the colonial throwback presumably responsible for the flat screen TV having BBC World
but not CNN - the first western TV channel we'd seen all week.

We made a brief sortie into the city in the worst heat we'd experienced so far to be shown round an old merchant rest-house, then beat a hasty retreat back under the air conditioning.