Namaste

Driving update: familiarity certainly doesn't breed contempt. Tried a few more driving modes apart from taxi and truck. These include auto rickshaw, bycycle rickshaw and sitting on top of a jeep. All of these apear to be extremely perilous, and, in fact, they are. Still, only seen about 100 accidents so far, so probably all will be well.

In Delhi at the moment, and yes, I was here when the bomb went off at the mosque, and no, I was nowhere near, and yes, I'm fine. I much prefer being out in the sticks compared to being in a city. All the days have been good so far, but the best have been when we've been invited back to a couple of our local guides houses for dinner.

The first time was when I was on top of a jeep. After bush camping (which involves finding a flat bit of land and camping there, paying the farmer a few rups if he turns up to find out what's going on), we took a trip to Rafiq's (our guides) house. I was on top of the jeep, but that's only because there were 14 people inside or hanging on the outside. Oh, and there was another 5 people up top with me.

We were fed and watered well, and the whole village came out to view us eating. Ricky, our driver, got his guitar out and there was a bit of a sing-song, many of us had our hands and arms henna'd up, and a great time was had by all.

Had a couple of impromptu cricket matches as well, and hope to get a few more in. I'm itching to play a proper match.