- Up early past the hassling auto-drivers ... no bus ... walking ... got public auto ... He overcharged me 30Rp, but got right to Jhansi station.
- Ticket counter had lines of 50, one only 20, .. As I queued other men suddenly left the line .. I was in the ladies line ... But by then I was only second so held on until I got a ticket.... Train came at 7.15am super packed, but I climbed through and sat up in the top berths. By 8.45am we reached Gwalior.

- Shiva got a few slaps on behalf of auto drivers... Recommended hotel was 200Rp so wasted a sweaty hour searching. Almost gave up before I was offered a room with a German for 120Rp.

- entering the gate the first place you see is a Palace which is now an archaeological museum 100Rp, but up the hill is the Archaeological Survey of India museum .. It's crap .. Just statues.

- In most Indian places there seem to be 3 museums. My experience is if they all combined they could have 1 reasonable museum, but what they end up with is 3 mediocre museums (Jaiselmer)

- What's it with these competing museums National vs state vs private ? ...not been impressed yet.

- Got a 150Rp ticket which covers 3 places in the fort. The ticket used to include an audio guide, but the guides got it cancelled

- Old Palace Took 10 minutes, the main thing is the circular basement rooms later used as a dungeons. The upper rooms and views were closed.

- This got to be a familiar pattern. The forts are impressive :
- 1. From their position and size
- 2. From their external architecture
- but once you pay your ticket money and go in there is nothing special to see inside .... Just the odd painting

- Then a couple of elaborately carved red rock temples, but it's the view down over the city that's more striking.

- Next another grey granite temple built for 2 lovers

- Then came down on South west - passing many huge Jain sculptures carved into the rock Petra style.

- 1pm so too hot to do anything ... internet - this PC just infected my card with 2a.exe virus..fixed it

- Actually seeing the fort was a secondary thing cos now I have a new obsession - liquid ! After 10am in the pre monsoon Summer season nothing else matters.
- 10am - cold drink - 11am milk lolly from bicycle man ... 12pm

- Water? forget it ... It has to be chilled water ... And even then it doesn't take away the thirst ... You buy a litre and drink it straight away and still feel thirsty. After never buying any water at all in the north east I bought 3 litres yesterday. I have a real feeling I could be drinking too miuh water.

- Since water doesn't take away the thirst. I quickly developed some special techniques
-1. Super Cheap Ice Coffee - My old technique of carrying coffee and milk powder so turn a litre of water ino ice coffee
- 2. Milk is better than water : Discovered that there are many dairies selling ice cold milk, which is more cooling than water. And i's got a government maximum price of 5Rp for 0.25l
- 3. Smaller Bottles - Water pouches are 1Rp - but you have to search as shops don't display them as profits on bottled water must be bigger.
- Small pop bottles I see you can buy 200ml for 8Rp some places.
- 4. Rasna crystal sachets - this is a great discovery - small shops sell 1Rp sachets which you can add to cold water .. The cola and mango are great flavours ... You end up with 1l for 13Rp as opposed to cola in bottles at 15Rp a cold 300ml bottle.

- There is also a lemon flavour called jal jeera, but it contains chilli and other spices so is disgusting to me.
- 5. "Fruits and beer" is a great soft drink flavours which contains no beer nor fruit, but has a superior Vimto like flavour so is worth the 18Rp.
... Real beer is far too expensive its's 90+Rp per litre so twice Meghalaya or 3 times UK supermarket price ... Looking forward to cold wine sometime
- 6. Plain factory fruit lollys are 5Rp so also better than water.
- tried to make iced tea, but Indian tea is too low quality

- So 7am walked over to old area of town where the Sultan Tansen memorial is. ... Park but nothing special really.

- The Indian guys are all spending hours in the cyber watching porn. ... An over-friendly guy gave a lift so I couldn't walk past the area I wanted to.

- Everywhere turned off their fans ... Against current surges I guess so I couldn't wait for my bus in any cafe. I couldn't wait in the bus terminal either it was already disgusting and the wind blew in even more garbage. So I thought in the absence of fans sitting on the ground of the now cool carpark was the best place. The Indians freaked of course. It's a huge cultural difference .. To foreigners they seem stupid cos they can't see dirt with their own eyes they just apply a rule "ground dirty, inside clean", so 20 of them stood around staring and being annoying instead of minding their own business. Eventually the rain came so I had to stand inside the dirty terminal.