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Published: June 29th 2006
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men returning home!
They all dressed up, in the equivalent of our Hallowe’en costumes and then did a mad dance by the river Udaipur is the jewel of Mewar kingdom ruled by the Sisodia dynasty for 1200 years. There is a legend assocaiated with the foundation of the city. According to it, Maharana Udai Singh, the founder, was hunting one day when he met a holy man meditating on a hill overlooking the Lake Pichhola. The hermit blessed the Maharana and advised him to build a palace at this favorable located spot with a fertile valley watered by the stream, a lake, an agreeable altitude and an amphitheater of low mountains. Maharana followed the advice of the hermit and founded the city in 1559 A.D.
I would love to say we planned to see the Mewar Festival in Udaipur but obviously as it was Irene and I, we were lucky enough for out time in Udaipur to coincide with it.
Coinciding with the festival of Gangaur the Mewar festival is celebrated to welcome the advent of spring. The festival of Gangaur is very significant for women of Rajasthan, they dress up in their best clothes to welcome their men home. The festival is devoted to Goddess Parvati, the consort of Lord Shiva. Ishar & Gangaur are the divine male and female ho embody marital
love. The images of Isar and Gangaur, are dressed up and then carried in a ceremonial procession through different parts of the city. The procession winds its way to the Gangaur Ghat at Lake Pichhola. Here, the images are transferred to special boats. Once the religious part of the festival is over, it is time for cultural events where Rajasthani culture is portrayed through songs, dances and other programmes. The festival culminates with an impressive fireworks display. Like other fairs and festivals that we saw, the streets just go nuts - everyone is just out to enjoy themselves and the celebrations go on for hours. It’s lovely in India aswell because the sari’s are so beautiful and have such vibrant colours so even just looking at the women is fab.
The first day we were down by the Ghat for the festival which was cool, then the second day we watched from Edelweiss so we could see the procession properly as they carried the deities down to the water. The kids down at the festival were so funny, a group of lads surrounding us thinking they were so hot!
After the festival we met this random Swedish dude who was
handing out flyers about a party. It was in a rooftop restaurant so we went to that that night and ended up meeting loads of cool people and having such a laugh. One of the guys had a guitar and could play nearly every song you asked. We ended up down by the Ghat in the middle of the night (having first being chased away from two places by people trying to sleep!), having a sing-song. And Anna introduced us all to her song about Gilbert the Goldfish…you’re more than a fishy to me!!
A random bit was that there was a bull having a sleep by the Ghats as well and the rabid dogs decided to start going for each other. You never see them stir really in the daytime because it is too hot but at night you can hear the most awful shrieks and howls, which as we saw is because they just randomly and viciously attack each other. Marcus, the Swedish dude was pulling them off each other…I don’t know how he didn’t get bitten.
The next night we also went to a rooftop party in the English girls’ place. They were doing work experience in
the local vets as part of their course so they had the nicest accommodation. As we walked to the party, we were just coming out of our side street and this elephant walks by, so we all stand out of the way and then continue on…just like it was the most natural thing in the world to have legs the size of tree trunks literally walking a foot away from you. We just all got so used to stuff like that in India, we actually had to say to ourselves - “yea, an elephant just walked by!”. We had dinner in the rooftop garden, and thank God Jim and Russell went to the bottle shop for rum so we (I mean I) didn’t have to drink more bloody beer! After we got kicked off the rooftop, we went to the girls rooms which were like twice or three times the size of any of ours and actually had a bath never mind hot water which we used to have to time to get - at certain times there was hot water and not at others! It was the most frustrating thing. We ended up again on the rooftop of our
guesthouse, with Jim and his guitar singing songs!
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