Udaipur

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This is where India holidays - the place is packed with Indian tourists. Udaipur has two beautiful palaces on islands in the middle of the lake. We visited the large city palace which rests next to the lake before going for a boat ride to look at the other palaces which have now been turned into luxury hotels. A nice bottle of Cloudy Bay wine was $250! This afternoon we did a cooking course - but don’t worry, we just watched while Kala cooked. It was absolutely delicious. Matt took numerous videos of how to make naan bread so hopefully this will be an improvement on his last attempt and we now have the delicious recipe for chai! We stayed in a lovely guesthouse with views over Lake Pichola.

29 December - We met a lovely Italian couple, Guilia and Joseph at our guesthouse and headed out with them for the day and hired a driver. We covered a huge distance going to Kumbalgarh and Ranakpur, passing through small colourful villages and watching the local women in their beautiful saris working. The colours of the Rajasthan hills are gorgeous - sort of a pink haze covers them. The area is extremely dry and pretty remote.

Ranakpur is 90km north of Udaipur. It is a huge Jain temple carved out of white marble, built in 1439. It is supported by 1444 pillars, no two alike and absolutely amazing. We then headed to Kumbalgarh. This was another massive drive. We knew it was a fort but could not see anything anywhere and then we rounded a corner and there it was - it was absolutely massive - it has over 300 temples, palaces and gardens. It is set in the Aravalli hills. It was only conquered once in history and given its remote location and massive fortress we could see why.

30 December - In the bid to find an internet café, we stumbled upon the Saheliyon Ki Bari ornamental gardens which was laid out for 48 female attendants who came as part of the princess’ dowry. It has a fountain of marble elephants and a gorgeous lotus pool. This afternoon we caught the train to Bundi - a small Indian town.

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Photos

Ranakpur
Over 1440 columns make up this temple - no two are the same

Kumbalgarh
The fort wall is over 35km long, apparently second only to the Great Wall of China