Day 6- Thursday 6th March- Jaipur, India

We were all up and ready for KP to pick us up at the agreed time of 8am, but when, by 8:30, he hadn't shown up, we began to worry that his vodka binge the night before had left him passed out and sleeping late. However, just after 8:30, he showed up and said he'd been waiting outside for us since 8, but we didn't believe him.
KP took us up to the Amber Fort and parked up. It was here that we were to ride an elephant up into the fort itself. Sarah said she had a bit of a fear of heights and unstable things, so decided not to take part.
The queue took the best part of an hour and contained many tourists. In front of us, a sunburnt Australian man explained cricket to some Americans and behind us, another Aussie was chatting to an Englishman about their businesses. It wasn't even 9am yet, but it must have been at least 25 degrees. Several people walked up and down the line trying to flog tacky souvenirs with elephants on them.
When it finally came to our turn, Sarah hopped back in the car with KP and Hannah and I hopped on our elephant. We paid the elephant man (the man riding the elephant, not John Merrick) for our ride and we started moving. It was lots of fun! I'd never been so close to an elephant before and realised just how huge they are. The elephant kept spraying himself (and us) with water, and flicking his tail about so it hit my feet. The ride took about fifteen minutes and was just as crazy with elephant traffic as the roads were with cars. As we arrived in the fort, the elephant driver (for want of a better word) asked for a tip. We gave him 50 rupees and a pen and he trotted off happily. We caught up with Sarah and KP before going into the main building of the fort.
To get into the Amber Fort, we had to pay a hundred rupees each. I still had no money thanks to damn HSBC, so Hannah had to pay for me. Inside the fort, we bought some cool drinks and sat in the shade before exploring and checking out the awesome views of Jaipur. After wandering around the fort for half an hour, we left and found KP in the car park. By now, it was 11:30 and we decided to go back to the hotel, via a few places that KP wanted to show us.
First stop on the way back was a jewellery workshop. A young guide with glasses showed us around. He said he was a student of some kind of science and took a keen interest in our studies, especially Hannah's, since she's studying chemistry. We were shown the raw stones from nearby mines, how they are cleaned and cut and finally taken to the shop below. There, we were shown a lot of different kinds of jewellery at very reasonable prices. I took this opportunity to buy Anna's birthday present, and bought her a nice Aquamarine necklace. We paid for our jewellery and left, worried that we'd spent too much.
Next, KP drove us further into the city centre and told us we could get out to take some pictures. It was so crazily busy, so we decided no to bother as we were completely exhausted.
Finally, we stopped at a small artist workshop. A man wrote our names on a grain of rice for 100R. We were then offered many different kinds of paintings, from silk to camel bone. The sales technique in India is really quite annoying and kind of pathetic. They treated us like honoured guests, which was nice, but then they just kept showing us stuff and lowering prices until we buy something, expecting us to buy loads since they thought we were rich, white folk, and this is the case in all shops! As Hannah was pestered to buy paintings, even though she'd bought one the day before, I deliberately acted completely uninterested and KP giggled at paintings of the Kama Sutra and acted like I would be interested too because I'm a man. He was getting on my nerves a bit. When the painting people finally got the message, they started showing us tea and perfumes. Hannah was actually interested in buying some tea, but even when she'd bought the stuff she wanted, they continued to push. They seemed incredibly annoyed that we bought so little and we left with our tea and rice grains.
KP told us we could go to a temple later on to see prayer time. I was pretty interested by this, but so completely exhausted from the heat and early morning, so we stayed in the hotel and went on the internet for a bit. It was painfully slow. I was on for 25 minutes and, in that time, managed to read 2 emails, change my facebook status and find the number for Singapore Airlines. I tried sending a couple of emails and checking my bank account but no dice.
After the internet fiasco, we ordered more chips and rice from room service and watched Green Wing. The afternoon disappeared as we listened to music and entertained the kids who were outside again. As he sun set, we went up on to the roof again. KP was up there and told us that it was the festival of Shiva, so people were out celebrating which is why there was music playing over the city again. KP offered to buy us beer, but we weren't in the mood. He then went off on an awkward but moving tangent about how he has to support his five siblings and widowed mother through his job and how he wouldn't get any work over the summer months. KP was a decent guy, but I knew this was a rehearsed speech to get us to give him a large tip the next day or feel guilty if we don't. After a while he went away and we went back to our room. We were out cold by 9. Hardcore!