Bikaner

Got up pretty early at about 7 as we didn’t have a lot of time to look around town, we had arranged with Sud to leave at 10. Had a quick breaky and headed out onto the streets, it wasn’t long before we had another kid start talking to us and pointing out what to look at etc, after about 5-10min i stopped him and told him that we didn’t have any money (which we didn’t as our hotel refused to let us pay by card and there is no ATM in town) and that i was happy to talk to him but that i could not give him any money. He seemed fine with that and continued to show us around town - the town was quite beautiful, a lot of old buildings many of which had these amazing paintings all over them, some worn off and hardly visible - while others were new and very colorful. After a couple of hours we told our new friend we had to go back to our hotel as we were getting picked up at 10, he was fine with that and started taking us back but along the way took us to his family's textile shop (always a catch) inside they started laying out some lovely patchwork quilts/decorations for us, we ended up buying two after haggling the price down and getting them to accept a card. Afterwards he took us back to our hotel so other guides wouldn’t bother us on the way.
Fast forward 3 or so hours and we arrive in Bikaner, roads on this drive were definitely much better. The scenery is getting much drier and even more dusty as we head into the desert - although Sud says that this year the rains lasted a lot longer then normal so there are still shrubs and some greenish trees. We checked in at our hotel at about 1 just as they were serving lunch (this is kind of a home stay place so there is a set meal) we met and had a talk with 2 guys from Finland, 1 from Norway and 2 English girls about where we had been/where to go. After lunch we headed out to Bikaner fort, this place was amazing - it was where the Maharaja of Bikaner lived, the place was huge and the rooms stunning, one of the rooms was a huge hall and the walls were carved out of stone from floor to ceiling in amazingly detailed floral/animal/god motifs, hard to explain it all but we took plenty of photos which im sure wont do it justice either. We spent a good 3 or so hours here and afterwards headed back to our room. Tomorrow its off to the temple, yes the rat temple! and then our overnight camel safari which we are thinking is going to be absolutely freezing judging by tonight’s temp!