Leaving Agra behind was something of a relief – even though we love the Taj Mahal and the Baby Taj, it has to be said that the hawkers and shopkeepers in Uttar Pradesh seem somewhat hardcore when compared with their Rajasthani counterparts. I think most people would agree – it's one of the frustrating things about travelling, and eventually you have to develop an equally agressive brush off technique.

In Rajasthan, Europeans driving an Indian car seem to attract less unwanted attention (and souvenir type goods) – in UP, they don't seem to care where you're from.

With Dholpur as our destination, we were wondering if there would actually be anything there to see. The main purpose of the visit was to check out the Van Vihar Wildlife Sanctuary and Ram Sagar – we're planning a wildlife tour and they came as a recommendation, so we thought we'd add them to the RRR list. While Dholpur itself was nothing to write home about, the 500 year old Ganesh temple down one of the side streets was definitely worth a quick stop off.

Our jaunt around Van Vihar may have started out as a quest to find wildlife, but rapidly turned in to an exploration of the varied terrain, and more off-roading. It's hard to know where the boundaries of Van Vihar actually are – even the locals don't seem to know. In any case, we decided to just keep on driving until we reached well....the end of the road, quite literally. Scrubland turned to lush green valleys, which gave way to banks of sand, through which the 'road' had been carved.

The terminus was a small village, and a sandy walk down to the river, although there was almost a feel of being on the beach. Of course the water level was at it's lowest given the time of year and so we were effectively walking along the river bed. Still it was one of those Rajasthan moments where you just stop and think 'wow'.

It was a bumpy ride there, but not a single complaint as we received instructions that the only way back was more or less the way we had come from. Our trusty GPS hadn't managed to pinpoint our location for the best part of four hours and it was almost a disappointment to get back on to a main road. That was until the next temptation.