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Published: October 29th 2017
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Early morning blogging Udaipur During the night an intermittent soundtrack of unwelcome noise has us both tossing and turning. The interior of the hotel is a boom box, we were sure that there must have been, impossibly, a couple of hundred people all talking at the same time as they went up and down the stairs past our room. This proved only the start of our noisy night. Next we had, every other hour or so, howling dogs, one would start then another until the full canine choir had it’s howl going on. It seemed to me that they had entered our room one at a time to perform solely for our benefit. The dogs proved to be the support act for the wailing babies who always took over as the dogs finished. We wouldn’t have cared to much if we didn’t have to listen to half a dozen performances during the night. We did have our pillows, these we may have used to help block out the noise, but that proved difficult with the large concrete lumps we had to rest our weary heads on.
I am also now suffering, from the strange phenomenon of ‘Non Delhi belly’ , I have a stomach
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Staircase, The Taj Mahal Mumbai. ache and feel so full of food that I am sure this is the equivalent of feeling 9 months pregnant. Despite not being able to go I continue to stuff food down my throat, I am gradually filling up, to the brim.I seriously think I will need some sort of intervention, inducement?. It really is a chronic case, I must be some sort of medical wonder, a 1 in a million, how many people visit India and become severely constipated?
The day dawns over the old town of Udaipur and despite the bad nights sleep it is beautiful to sit in the window seat of our room, I look out over the stirrings of the city as I am writing the blog and enjoying this peaceful moment when suddenly a bloody drone is flying overhead. I wonder if it is there to spot the long gone dogs and babies. The loud buzz wakes Shenton who grumpily says he will find the pilot and throw them in the lake.
We have breakfast at a ‘french bakery’, that we found on trip advisor, as Shenton fancies this as a change to Indian food. Again its another roof top restaurant, but
this time there is actually a lift. I am beginning to think that there are no restaurants which are not based on roof tops in Udaipur. We order food and seconds later hear the chef hacking up something in the kitchen, great not very inspiring or French so far! The food was ok but the constant coughing left a lot to be desired. We head back to the hotel as we have a massage booked in an hour.
As we are walking along the quiet morning street we see a man approach on a motorbike and he has the smallest baby on the front, no more than 18 months old, now its not unusual to see families on bikes here, 4 or 5 on one bike but this time the baby is leaning forward with his tiny hands gripping the petrol tank in front of him. His father has both his hands on the bikes handle bars. The baby looks comfortable and as though he has been doing this since before he was born, a professional bike rider already. I am not so sure this would pass any other countries health and safety rules. The baby also has black
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Picture time, they get 5 we get 1 eyeliner on, this seems a common thing in India with all the boys and girls under the age of about 7, I am not sure why?
We manage to have our massages at the same time, at an Ayuverdic place. We are in separates areas of the shop but only separated by a screen. i can hear Shenton talking with his masseuse through his entire massage and even answer some of the questions I know he is not going to know the answer to, like what hotel we are staying at.
On the way back to the hotel to pick up our bags, the shops are now beginning to open and one of the shop keepers comments that he likes my cloth patchwork bag. I tell hm I made it and he shows me what he makes with old Indian sari’s, they are very pretty too.
Shenton admires the royal enfield bike outside the place we have booked our taxi to the airport and the owner tells him he can ride it if he wants. Shenton says “What all the way to Mumbai” and he genuinely seems unfazed by this and says sure why not.
The
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The Iconic dome from within people of Udaipur are very relaxed and even though many are still trying to sell us stuff we get the impression that here they also genuinely want to have a chat with you and they are not so bothered when you don’t want to buy anything. A sweet place and sweet people
The flight to Mumbai was uneventful, the airport at Udaipur is tiny and not much to do there so we just eat some maggi noodles and wait for our flight.
As we arrive into Mumbai the airport is very well organised and we easily get a cab with a/c, called a cool cab, its a fixed price into the city of 700 rupees. The cab is quite small and the luggage has to be put on the roof as there is no room in the taxi, we have to stop at a petrol station on the way into town and we realise the cab runs on gas, as do all most of these little taxis. Its a good job really as there are so many of these little taxis, the pollution would be toxic .The traffic is heavy and it takes 1hour 45 minutes to get
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4th floor, where we have our room to the hotel and the taxi driver tries to point out various things to us on the way but its dark and his english is not the best so I have to keep looking at the blue dot on google maps to see what he is pointing out. As we pull up to the Taj Hotel the security checks are really strict with the cars being searched from top to bottom before being allowed entry. We are given a lovely welcome and are upgraded to the old part of the Taj hotel and a view of the gateway of India, we feel very lucky to be staying in this iconic hotel and even have a butler for the floor who follows us around and chats with Shenton about football and his favourite team and wants to do everything and anything for us.
Instead of going out tonight we decide to eat at the hotel and treat ourselves as it is our anniversary, we enjoy a bottle of Indian wine which is the first we have tried and it really is very tasty. The food is great and the service is impeccable, all that could be expected really
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Our butler appears from nowhere and takes our picture on the old staircase. from the Taj.
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Amit
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Children eye liner.
Parents put eye liners on their children to ward off "evil eye". Bit of a superstition. I had it and my brothers too. I never put them on my kids but the grandparents tied a black thread on the ankle of my little ones for the same purpose. Also, some believe that black eye liners ( called Soorma or Kajal) also improves eye sight. But, that's a myth.