As I laid trying to get to sleep the night before thinking about all of the food gurgling around my full stomach, dogs fought and horns beeped. When the alarm went off at 4.30am, Maddie and I were up and out within 20 minutes. Sat like zombies in the hotel foyer, Raj briefed us on the plan for the day and off we went to get in the taxis to the station. We get to station at 5.15am for our 6.15am train. Dom slept on the platform floor. Again, we were split into two sections, this time I was with Dom and JohnMiller. I spend most of the train journey updating my blog sat on a top bunk. Near the end of the journey a creepy man lies in another top bunk perpendicular to mine and stares at me. I ignore him but then his hand moves underneath his sheet. Nope. Nope. Nope. In his defence he could have been doing anything but because he'd looked at me he freaked me out and I jumped down. Raj was mortified. The train stopped midway for a 15 minute break and we trudge out of the train for some fresh air and chai. Goats roam the platform,van elderly lady begs and the sun beats down. Back on board, the train hurtles towards Jodhpur and we arrive at midday to waiting tuc tucs to take us to the hotel. The hotel is beautiful, it's tucked away off a main busy road with wild pigs sniffing around the street and children playing. The building is a salmon pink with white arches, two floors and a square shape with a courtyard in the middle. The courtyard is full of flowers, large flower pots with plants that growing up the walls blossoming a bright pink or white flower. Benches are buried in the corners enveloped by the greenery and a cushioned swing sits in the shade. The floor has brightly painted motifs all around the edges and terracotta bird houses hang from the balcony edges along side hanging baskets. On the first floor balcony are large soft seats which overlook the courtyard and give you a clear view of the sky, while fans whir overhead. For a minute I forget it's 38 degrees. 

This is a family run business and a home cooked lunch has been prepared for us; rice, aubergine curry, potatoes with cumin, cabbage, home baked roti. It all contains coriander, which Beth doesn't like and I can't help feeling sorry for her because we were all so hungry when we arrived, but she eats around it. Raj hands out the room keys and I'm sharing with Beth this time. Quick showers and a change, we’re back downstairs to go on a tour of the Bishnoi Village. A jeep with an open back is waiting to whisk us off to a rural area of Rajastan, six of us in the back cooped up, interlocking thighs due to the narrow width. 45 minutes later, after passing through small dirt track streets lined with cold drink sellers, swathes of children playing in the roads, hot and sweaty, we fall out of the jeep to a potters yard. A few young children, under five I think (although I am terrible at guessing ages) run around bare foot in the dusty drive way, surrounded by pots cooling in sun. A man in his late twenties greets us and instructs us to sit under the shelter to the left for a demonstration. With such ease, he kneads and teases the clay against a slate. Using a wooden stick, pushed into a small round hole, he spins a thick, heavy round stone into a quick pace- a traditional potters wheel. He makes it look featherlight. 3 minutes later, in front of us sits a money box, a jar with perfectly matching lid and a bowl. After each creation we wowed and studied the finished artefacts, while they waited for the kiln. Dylan had a try on the wheel and Jess bought a small painted elephant for her brother. Back in the jeep and onto the next stop on our Bishnoi Village tour, a traditional opium man. Driving along fields full of peacocks and blue bulls, we take a sharp right into a walled property. There are five white walled square buildings, ten foot tall by six foot wide piles of cow dung, buffalo tied to posts and a very smiley man welcomes us. He has dark sun kissed skin, wears no shoes, white loose trousers, a white long sleeved tunic, a brown vest poking from underneath, a colourful wrap around turban, a bushy dark moustache with teased sides and houses some very blood shot eyes. I can't help but smile at him. Dom has been waiting for this since the start of the tour. He studied pharmacology and is a massive fan of drugs and their effects, both medicinally and recreationally. As if the man knew, he calls Dom to sit at the front next to him, and props his turban onto Dom and fashions himself a new turban made of white. In front of him, on a blanket on the floor, stands a device two feet tall. It has two round filters made of wool, one on each side of the stand, that tapers into triangle (they look like upside down, round based isosceles  triangles). Under neath the filters are carved wooden cups with small round metal straw like tubes poking out one end- they looked like gravy boats crossed with a pestle and mortar. The man takes out a jam jar. Inside the jam jar a small clear bag containing a golf ball sized, brown tar like substance. His face ecstatic. He keeps talking to us and Raj has to translate but it turns out most of what he says is gibberish. He opens the jar, unwinds the top of the plastic bag and passes it around for us to smell. He grins like a Cheshire Cat and waves his hand towards his face, encouraging us to smell deeply. All of us are laughing, he's fantastic. So funny and happy. Taking out a match stick, he removes a small amount of the tar, not even pea sized, and smears it onto the bottom of one the gravy boats, adding a little water, and grinds the brown goo into the water. He pours the water through the filter so the water trickles into the second gravy boat, grinds again and pours the water through the second filter. He repeats the process a few times. Talking and talking, laughing and smiling…he finally drinks his opium water. We leave the opium man, with his blood shot eyes and smiley face and go to a local carpet maker. Under a shelter, two men sit by a lathe working on a green carpet with white, dark blue and pale blues shapes. I watch their hands move as they pick between the columns and columns of white thread that they interlock with the green and blue.  I have no idea how to they do it, my eyes can't follow it nor make sense of it, but the result is beautiful. In the winter they work 14 hour days, in the summer ten. The owner speaks near perfect English which he has taught himself from listening to the radio, he's also started to learn German and tests it out talking with Dom. After explaining a typical working day and the types of materials used, the owner takes us to a show room for chai and shows us his items for sale. As he unfolds carpets of all shapes, sizes, colours and materials Jess’ face lights up and from the other side of the room Dylan says ‘we are not buying a carpet’…twenty minutes later and $200 less they have a lovely new carpet for their, currently, non existent home. (This can accompany the bed throw they bought in Jaislamer which turned out to have a massive cow poo on it, that they only discovered once they had got it back to the hotel to admire). Rugs purchased, chai drank, we get back into the sweaty jeep and return to the hotel for showers. 

Raj has picked a dinner venue that he seems quite excited about. Two men stand at the entrance to greet us as we walk through a wide tall door way, leading into a fake-fire-torch-lit corridor. Once through the archway we were in the open, white stone gravel floor, candle lit tables, trees with low lying branches, certainly the fanciest place we had eaten so far. I sit at the end in between JohnMiller and Dylan, Jess on the other side of Dylan. JohnMiller spends most of the time on the phone trying to sort his bank card. Dylan tells me about life, his family and his sister who lives just outside London…in Bristol. Nope, not quite Dylan. He has just qualified as a pharmacy assistant after a myriad of jobs. Eight in the past three years, one of which lasted a year and all totally different jobs. Jess just rolls her eyes entirely used to the situation and tells me about their wedding in November and how they got together. A few drinks at the bar adjacent to the restaurant and we head back about 10pm. Beth, Maddie, Dom and I have a beer on the balcony upstairs, and play would you rather.