Udaipur, Chittorgarh and Bundi

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Hello Avid Readers

I hope you are all well, and thanks for reading our blog!

After leaving Jodhpur we heard there was stampede at a mosque the night after we left, with over 100 people killed. We were at that temple only 2 days before and saw all the scaffolding set up to separate the men's and women's queues. Rest assured we are not so keen as to be up at dawn to visit a temple, which is when the stampede happened! Still, seeing the pictures in the papers (which are a lot more graffic than pictures in UK newspapers) we were glad to be out of the city.

We arrived in Udaipur after a 5 hour bus ride on bumpy roads - we were glad we took the 'delux' option which means you get individual seats rather than bench seat which would seat at least 4 locals in the same space! Udaipur is famous for its Lake Palace, which featured in the James Bond film Octopussy and is now a very expensive hotel, accessible only by boat. The town actually has two palaces in the middle of the lake as well as a huge palace beside the lake, plus countless other havelis (ornately carved old 'mansions'), and is surrounded by hills, so is a pretty place to wander round. We enjoyed the views from the many rooftop restaurants we ate at, and Tim enjoyed his first cappucinno since leaving England in a German-run cafe which also sold very nice cakes!

We stayed for 3 nights in Udaipur and then thought it time we moved on to somewhere new, so decided to head slightly off the main tourist route to Chittor and Bundi. An early morning train took us to Chittor in two hours, but that was the smoothest part of what turned out to be a long day! We took a rickshaw through the main town up to the 13 km2 fort set on a plateau on top of a big hill, only to find that the guesthouse we were aiming for had closed down and there were no others at the top. Carrying our rucksacks, and wishing we had packed more lightly, we made it up to the very top of the hill, and after some discussion were taken to a dharamshala (= pilgrim house) where we were able to hire a room to store our bags in for a few hours while we toured around the fort, with its numerous temples, palaces and towers on the back of a guide's motorbike (3 on a bike is really quite normal here, as is a family of 5 on a bike!).

Having failed to find accommodation near the fort, and not fancying a night in one of the hotels by the railway station and noisy main road, we decided to get out of Chittor and on to Bundi. By that time we were hot and bothered and copped out of public transport in favour of a taxi (less than 20 quid for a 4 hour journey ain't bad).

Bundi is much more pleasant, and we are glad we came. Yesterday we climbed up the big hill to see the palaces and fort, which is all overgrown with trees and now inhabited by hundreds of monkeys, but still has some old wall paintings left in some of the rooms, and stunning views of the surrounding countryside. We rambled around the ruins for about 3 hours and watched the sun setting. We were told to borrow a big stick and were glad we did - some of them were quite bold and keen to show off to their troop by refusing to move out of our way! As we only had one stick, I armed myself with a rock, which also seemed to do the trick. (For animal lovers - we didn't actually have to hit them, it was enough to wave stick/rock at them thankfully!)

Today we hired some bikes (no gears, very rickety) and pootled around the outskirts of the town and around a lily-filled lake where Rudyard Kipling started writing one his books. The heat is oppressive though and after 3 hours we retired to our room for cold showers and the fan! In fact it's so hot here that we spent a very enjoyable 10 minutes in an ATM booth this morning because it had air conditioning!!

That's all for now, we are moving on to Pushkar tomorrow and into our last week in India.

Lots of love
Kirst and Tim xxxx

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