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Published: March 5th 2006
Light entertainment in the evening
From where we sat in the evenings, with our view out over the palace, we were normally treated to fireworks from the palaceDespite only having about a week left in India I ended up spending 3 days here before I caught a train out of the place. Just to set the scene, Udaipur is a picturesque city surrounded by lakes, one of which has an old palace (now a hotel) in the middle but apart from that there isn't much to it. Why then did I spend 3 days there? Alcohol, good company and bad reports about the places I was planning to go to.
The highlight here for me was a day spent on scooters again. There were four of us that went on two bikes - Me and Becky (English), Michael (Austrian) and Kevin (Dutch). Michael and Kevin were both completely insane! They generally rode infront of us and we spent most of our time laughing at them. Sure that their bike was going to fall apart any moment with an engine that was barely attached to the bike and grinding sounds as Michael repeatedly struggled to get it into gear. We met a great family at one point who invited us for tea in one of the villages about 20km out of the city just passed a place called
Evening leisure
Not a bad way to unwind from a hard days work... tiger lake. The last activity of the day was watching another (getting tired of this now) sunset at a place called monsoon palace. For me and Becky it ended in clouds of smoke and more laughter as our scooter, with no gears, failed to make it up the hill and got slower and slower until it could no longer support either of us. We abandoned it to walk up the last bit - making it to the top just in time to see the sun disapear behind the mountains where Michael and Kevin were now laughing at us because their gears had really come through for them on the hill.
The rest of my time was spent here doing a bicycle ride, wondering the streets and relaxing in the hotel drinking beer - which can only be bought at special 'english wine shops' which must be a minimum distance away from any holy place (something like 1.5km).
The hotel I stayed at sits on the main lake with beautiful views out over it from the communal seating area. The evenings here were always spent drinking large amounts and chatting. There seemed to be the terrible attitude that modern
Tiger Lake
17km out of Udaipur a great place to stop - clean(ish) and peaceful day travellers have of trying to be the most cultured and most travelled - each person with their own tactic for showing this. Nevertheless it's still great fun sitting around in the evening and meeting all the different people each with their own story to tell.
Perhaps because somebody mentioned this to me recently I really noticed the 'come to find myself' type of traveller here. One of the most cliche'd reasons to come to india is on a spiritual quest to find yourself and I was shocked to find that there are still a lot of people openly admitting to this - which I believe is a farce. If you are on a quest to find yourself then surely there is somewhere better to do it than a wholly commercial and unspiritual place like Udaipur..?
The suggestion of going to Jaisalmer was raised the day of the motorbikes and a later chain events led to me, Becky and Fiona, another girl from the hostel, taking the long and bumpy ride to Jaisalmer. 2 Days later my two wives (a joke we told indian men who were asking after them) and I set off with the hope of
Stand to attention!
Playing with the kids of the family that invited us for tea doing a 'camel safari' together.
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