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Published: February 3rd 2007
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Sunset from our dinner table
Udaipur is full of amazing restaraunts with beautiful views Surprisingly the 6 hour bus ride from Jodhpur to Udaipur was comfortable and uneventful. A rareity, it seems, in India. Taking advice from one of Jasmines friend we found a beautiful hotel called Anjani. I love it when we find places like this. You can see all the time and effort they put into decorating your hotel and doing little things to help you out.
Udaipur is India's most romantic city. In the middle of the desert is a lake, surrounded with many whitewashed palaces. In the middle of the lake lies Udaipur's most famous structure. The 300 year old Lake Palace. The James Bond movie, Octopussy was filmed here. The locals won't let you forget that, and the movie is playing every night in several places.
It's a friendly little town, about the size of my hometown Burnaby, B.C. in Canada. About 350 000 people. In the area where we stayed everyone was quick to shake their hands and introduce themselves. Of course, most had something to sell or had a shop but they were genuine people. Even days later they would run into us on the other side of town, calling our names. For the life of me
Lake Palace Hotel
Over 300 years old. I wish we could've ate dinner there but the price is just silly. 1500 rupees! You'll have to convert that yourself ;) I can't remember their names and sometimes not even their faces. I always have to pretend I remember them. Saying our goodbyes they usually say that they hope we have a wonderful marriage and lots of children. One guy asked me how many wives I had, he was surprised that in Canada we only have 1 wife haha.
We spent our first day wandering around all the tourist sites in an auto-rickshaw. We haven't got to do this sort of thing in a while, so it was great. Saw some palaces and interesting hindu structures dating back centuries. We also went to go see a Rajisthani puppet show. Inever knew they had so much history, or that they would amuse me so much haha. I wish I would've bought one when they guy in Agra tryed to sell me one for $10 and let me talk him down to $1. haha That happened to me again. From each country we usually buy one small souvaneer to remember it by. We'd by more but we're travelling so long and have no room for them. We bought a stone carving of Ganesh the Hindu God. We talked the guy down to
White washed Palaces
It's a beautiful city full of palaces and Haveli's. It's a really pleasant place to just hang out for a few days 300 ($8.00) rupees from 700 ($18.00). Though we got a great deal! Then we got back in town and we offered the exact same one for 40 rupees (90 cents).....grrr!!!! haha
Everywhere we go Indians want to take pictures of us. It's kind of strange but were getting used to it. The problem is they are usually in large groups of 15, and each of them will have a camera and must have a picture of us and them with their camera. It takes time! This happening 3 or 4 times a day just gets silly. Sometimes we'll have to avoid walking near groups with cameras, or just say "no pictures no pictures!" haha After taking pictures they would wish us a happy marriage and hope we have lots of children. The other strange thing is we regularly get asked to sign autographs. Usually just signing our names on a random piece of paper or a book. I always say HELLO FROM CANADA!!! haha
The next day our hotel warned us not to go on the streets that night, as there was an Islamic festival and things could get pretty nuts. We booked an Indian cooking class for
Jasmine and friends
Everybody needs to have a picture with us. We get several requests per day! Once we say yes, the get all their cameras out and take a bunch of photos like us. We feel like movie stars haha the next day, and once again we were warned to stay in our hotel. We decided to take peoples advice after the third and fourth peoples warning.
As I said Udaipur is India's most romantic city. It has its fair share of beautiful hotels and amazing restaraunts. Of course we decided that we must eat at each and every fancy restaraunt to enjoy the sunsets. I mean why not, the most expensive thing on the menu is $3.50. Except when we ate at the Hilton which was $10 for an all you can eat buffet. For the night of the festival we booked a table at a restaraunt close by our hotel. I figuered it's not too far to get there, so if things get a little bit rowdy, it's only 2 blocks away.
During the evening 1000's of women and children lined the streets. And almost no men, which is usually the oposite. The vibe in the air was festive. Everywhere kids would be waving and asking the typical Indian questions. "Whats your name?, Where you from? Are you married? How many kids?" We spent just over an hour taking pictures of everyone and they loved it.
City tour
Udaipur....actually India is full of random areas with historical signifigane. It's actually quite amazing! A couple hours after dinner, the vibe on the streets had changed. The women and children had left and now there were 1000's and 1000's of men and boys. They were parading floats down the road as a procession for Islams holiest day. The vibe was now chaotic and more of a mob like mentality. It didn't seem dangerous, as everyone was still friendly, but the rowdiness made me nervous. Especially when people were telling us we should go back to our hotel or restaraunt. Also with Jasmine being the only female on the street it made things weird.
I needed to get some video footage of all the excitement. That was a big mistake. Instantly I had a mob of people, in front of me grabbing at us. They weren't trying to be violent of cause any problems. Like typical Indians they just wanted to get into the picture. With the moblike mentality everyone went nuts, so I put away the camera and decided it was time to leave. We headed one way and it looked like a riot so we headed the other way. The crowd soon got so thick with guys that nobody could move.
Women and Children
In the crowd for the festivities People were pushing and shoving and going nuts. This is not a party but a religous festival so they are taking all this very seriously. Cops were in the crowd, they had sticks and sheilds. One pointed at Jasmine and started laughing. I was behind her and had my arms wrapped around her so the Indian male hands would keep off. A lot of time people just wanted to help us get through the crowd. It was pretty scary and made us pretty nervous. It took about 30 minutes to walk the one block. We were so relieved to make it to our hotel. We didn't care there was no electricity due to the festival. We had a great sleep that night!
The next day we went for our cooking class. Our teacher was great. Learned all kinds of Indian dishes. I'v always cooked Indian food at home but relied of premixed spices and sauces from the grocery store. Now it can be more authentic. This will add to the Thai, Khmer (Cambodian) and Vietnamese cooking courses we took.
Later we headed into a travel agent to prebook some train tickets for the next couple weeks in South
women and Children
Segregated from the men during the festivities India. We spent 2 hours in there for him to tell us that every single train we wanted to book, and all the alternatives were full for the next month or so. They weren't just full, they had waiting lists of 100's of people, meaning 100's of people would need to cancel in order for us to board a train. He basically told us train travel is not an option for us. The bus rides are all 16 hours long. This just wouldn't make things fun since there would be so many rides and not s many places to see. We decided to look into changing our flights back to Bangkok 1.5 weeks earlier. This proved to be frusterating as well. The phone numbers changed and we just can't find any contacts for Thai airways. The time was 6pm and offices had closed so we'd have to try to look up their number the following day. It's difficult and frusterating and we're not sure what we want to do.
That night we spent our last night at a nice restaraunt. It made me realize that I don't want to leave India. It's incredibly dirty, but it's such an amazing
Muslim Men
Such nice guys. They gave me a coconut! place with amazing people!
I guess we just need more time to figure out what to do and how we're going to move from city to city.
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biplob
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Chapati!!
Hey..u know how to cook indian? In one class...thats great!! open a chapati store !! hows that? Nice photos from the festival!!