Palace on the Lake

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Hi!...Back again!

Rajasthan, the jewel of India??...It certainly is, and we've only seen a small part of it so far!

Udaipur (As we were told about fifty million times) is famous for it's part in the 007 film Octopussy, the stunning white palace in the middle of a lake and a wonderful town on the surrounding banks.

Unfortunately it isnt possible to visit the lake palace, which is now a hotel - unless of course you go for lunch at RS3000 per person (normal lunch approx RS75!!) or stay overnight $600-1200....unfortunately, miles off budget!...but it was nice to look at from afar, and we had the option to watch the 007 film at just about every roof-top restaurant in the city!

We did visit the main city palace home to their Maharaja, which is quite decadent but we were spoiled when we visited Mysore's Maharaja's palace and the one here wasn't a touch on that! The town here (and in a lot of Rajasthan) is made up of old "Haveli's" which are grand old houses with amazing balconies and woodworking so lots of pics of those.

We took a bus ride out into the desert lands and to a fortified town of Chittor which was a humongous area built ontop of a hill, housing palace and temple ruins with amazing views.

Dan - Rajasthan is the real India for alot of people, fortunatly the Rajputs still follow old traditions which is good for us tourists as things are so much more interesting. It seems like God or the Gods (whatever religion you are) have chucked a bloody great big ball of colour on Rajasthan so look at the pics to see the result. Further more being the animal lover I am i'm lucky as everywhere people seem to be taking thier Elephants or camels for walks all over the place.

On the subject of animals i'm a little upset, the other as I proceeded to collect our washing from the line I had to pass a group of monkies anyway on walking back up the monkies all proceeded to corner me and hiss at me, I mean there was 5 of them and they were only small fellows but one scratch or bite from there rabies ridden bodies and i'm a dead man. Lucky for me a man heard what was going on and came to help me chase them off with a very big stick. And then walking passed a cow yesterday it turned and butted me out the way........

Nic - ....Dont forget about the beautiful bird that we passed aswell - we stopped to dmire it's shiny blue and green feathers, which it didn't seem to like and all of a sudden it started attacking us dive bombing from all directions and screaching so loudly that the local villagers came out of their huts to see what all the fuss was about, and then fell about laughing hystericly as we ran away with our arms protecting our heads!...I think Dan's Dr Dolittle powers have begun to faulter!

I'm in heaven in this part of India, and I think I'm probably boring Dan with getting so excited over all the amazingly bright colours and adornments - the sari's are brighter and more flamboyant, the men wear amazingly coloured turbans (each colour with a different meaning which is far too complex for us to understand!) and the amount of jewelerry that the women wear is increased ten-fold, with bangles and armlets, nose rings, earrings, belts, anklets, rings, toe rings, infact I'm surprised they can move with the amount of extra weight that these women carry!

Dan - So there you go Udaipur.........up next Jodhpur " The mighty Fort & the blue city"

Stay tuned

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Comments

[scott free]

Dr Dolittle Dan wot are u doing!! haha the monkeys and cow story cracked me up!! wow it looks so colourful ur right nic. the lake hotel is amazing! this week at rys we are gonna look up octupussy on the net!!