Now that time has allowed our memories of India to settle, Tamara and I both think that Udaipur was the loveliest place we visited.

So we are all agreed!

We holed up in our room in Rishikesh for Holi – too much paint flying around and we had no old clothes to wear for the day – which would definitely have been needed.

It was interesting seeing the locals gently smear each other on the face with paint and then hug – not at all like the paint throwing we imagined.

That happened later.

The day after Holi, everyone was walking around looking hung-over but with scrubbed faces.

However, the paint clung on to them despite detergent, skin cleansers, washing up liquid, and repeated hot showers.

It seems a million miles away after the night train we took that left from Haridwar at midnight and arrived here in Varanasi fourteen and a half hours later.

We dragged ourselves dazed out of the railway station and into an auto-rickshaw that promptly ground to a halt, out of gas (petrol), in the crazy pell-mell traffic.

While the driver pushed his vehicle (with us in it) across the traffic to a gas station, we looked at each other and burst out laughing.

It is crazy here – filthy as well from what the cows deposit in the narrow lanes near the ghats on the banks of the Ganges.

Will publish the low-down later.

That parapet was awfully low, though!