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Published: August 4th 2008
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We have been laying low since our last blog. After my last session on the Internet, we went back to our hotel in Udaipur for an early night. I woke up at about 2am with stomach cramps. I woke Chris up who turned on the lights and shouted “Oh god - why’s there a bloody bat flying around the room!?!” He was right, there was a bat flying around our room - flapping like a mad thing, only inches above our heads.
Chris (in a moment of bravery) whacked it with a sheet and sent the poor little thing reeling to it’s death against the wall. After wrapping the body in the sheet and sending it out to reception, we were able to focus on my stomach ache again!
Ahh yes - the dreaded Delhi Belly had finally struck. And stuck well it did. The ‘Bat Incident’ was followed by 12 hours of the most severe vomiting and $@##%* that I have ever experienced. The pharmacist said it was a bacterial infection and prescribed a course of antibiotics which basically came back up the moment they were swallowed. The anti-vomit drugs were also pretty useless and they made repeat
The City Palace
Looks like a ship from above appearances too. Nevermind, at least it couldn’t have happened in a better place.
Udaipur is the nicest place we have visited so far and not a bad place to take it easy for four days.
After a full day of complete bed rest, I braved the world outside our room and went out into the streets. Only to see that Chris had befriended half the town, with perfect strangers coming out of their shops saying “Ahhh, kia ora! Are you feeling better?” Sounds like Chris was using me as an excuse to not buy silk scarves, elephant carvings and camel paintings! “My girlfriend is sick in bed, I can’t buy anything without her. Wait and see if she likes any of your stuff…” Thanks a lot Sweetheart!
As we found out during our stay, people in Udaipur are actually very friendly and most appear to enjoy interacting with us travelers. The shop owners were much more polite and the hassle factor of Agra was so much less. Also, Udaipur has an amazing location. Set around three lakes, with the big old City Palace overlooking the lovely ‘floating palace’ in the middle of Lake Pichola. Well, it wasn’t
The Floating Palace
Not quite floating at the moment... where are those monsoons?
quite ‘floating’ while we were there as it has been a poor monsoon. The local kids would play cricket out on the lakebed in the evenings, while some parts of the lake are even being farmed for crops! Obviously the boat trip would have been a bit of a disappointment so we spent the days visiting the local sites while trying to force down (and hold down) as much food and water as possible.
We visited the Palace (all I can remember is ‘gotta get back, going to be sick’ but Chris reckons it was quite nice) and Udaipur’s newest attraction: the Rope-way which was pretty lame but the views were okay. We got better views from the top of the
Monsoon Palace , so lovely to get out into the country, to be up in the clouds watching an eagle circling overhead. It was also a good 5 degrees cooler - very refreshing! We made use of our rooftop pool and also did a spot of shopping. Udaipur is well known for it’s personal stationery, notebooks and the like. Gutted, they were selling the same camel leather photo album here for a third of the price that we
Looking down on the Lake Palace
First trip outside the hotel door after my little bout of food poisoning... paid in Dilli Hart Market in Delhi - and that was without haggling!
One of the highlights had to be sheltering from the monsoon rain that struck a few times. The downfalls were absolutely amazing. I have never seen rain like it in my life. From a rooftop restaurant we also saw the most beautiful sunset behind the Monsoon Palace. Thousands of bats were flying across the orange sky. It would have made the most beautiful photo but for once we had left the camera in the hotel room! We enjoyed a few good nights out with some fellow travelers, smoking sheesha and watching Octopussy on the rooftop (obviously not at the same time, and for the record: not everyone was smoking the sheesha, but Chris mysteriously developed a bit of a sore throat the next morning…) Octopussy was absolute rubbish but we all loved it because it was so bad and large part of it was filmed in Udaipur. Restaurants all over town play it on dodgy televisions every night. Every man, woman, dog and cow in Udaipur must know the entire dialogue of Octopussy off by heart!
After four days we decided hire a driver and
move onto Ranakpur to visit the
Jain Temples and stay at the Ranakpur Hill Lodge where we are currently. The drive was awesome, the scenery en-route was stunning we were hanging out the window trying to spot the tigers that are apparently around here. Beautiful green fields of crops. I wish I had a chance to photograph the beautiful saris of the ladies working in the fields. We didn’t see any big cats but we did get chased by a huge white-faced monkey that took exception to our car. We speed up and the critter decided to give chase! Unbelievably, we were about 100metres down the road and doing about 25 km/hour before he decided to let us get away. This little incident hasn’t done much to calm my monkey fears!
The Jain Temples here are stunning. One of the highlights so far. The marble carvings inside are absolutely amazing. So much detail. The photos certainly aren’t’ going to do it any justice. The ticket man made me hire a lovely yellow smock as my below-the-knee ‘potato sack’ skirt was deemed inappropriate. Interestingly enough, there is no leather, food, drinks, bags or shoes allowed into the temple, nor
‘menstruating ladies’ but I’m not quite sure how they were checking this one!
Anyway, tomorrow we are off to Falma to catch the train to Jodphur for one night before heading on Bikanar for the (in)famous Rat Temple and ‘Camel Breeding Farm’. Gripping stuff… until then…
xx Anna & Chris
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