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Published: December 27th 2006
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Wow, Udaipur is gorgeous! We ended up staying here for nearly a week. Actually, we needed that to recover from the journey (although, to be fair was not as bad as we had thought it might be). Trains from Pune to Mumbai ( 4 hours), Mumbai to Ahmadebad (9 hours) and then Ahmadebad to Udaipur (8 hours, but we won a watch on this train as we had a wee cabin to ourselves and there was no way for chai sellers to walk between the carraiges all night shouting! However, the train driver kept his hand on the horn most of the way and the toilets were rather fragrant, but we were still chuffed with our 1st class non a/c private den!. So, not much sleep was had, and we were fully awake on the approach to Udaipur as we passed half a dozen blokes doing their number 2's in the field next to the track. Good morning India!
Made it to our digs after battling through the usual stramash of tuk-tuk drivers and touts at the station, and found that our digs were within (Indian) spitting distance of the lake and we had a view of this from our
balcony (for about 4 pounds per night!). The hotel was in a 250+ year old havelli, with a rooftop restaurant and TV which showed the locally shot 'Octopussy' every night. We got to know it quite well!
Udaipur has a different vibe to it than the other places we've been to so far. Even though there are more tourists per sq. ft. than old buildings it's a lot more laid back. The hawkers don't give the same hassle and eventually the shops we passed several times a day stopped trying to get us in with their 'very good prices' and just called out "Hey, Scottish." It was nice to feel at home. For the first time, people seemed interested in what we were doing in India and tried to find out about us rather than just about how much money we would spend in their shops.
To escape the heat we went off in search of a hotel that'd let us use their pool. We managed to find the coldest pool in India! Talk about one extreme to another. It was so cold that it hurt. Imagine the sea off the west coast of Scotland and it was
a few degrees colder. Suddenly the heat became more bearable and the record we were able to stay in the pool was for 2 lengths but that was only because there was only one set of stairs! Refreshing.
We took an hour long sunset tour of the lake to see the Lake Palace up close. Lake Picchola is man made and it dried out 2 years ago as the monsoon had been so light. It's back to full strength now as you can see so the locals have their litter dumping ground back (no kidding, we were sitting enjoying the sunset view on the shore one night when a local chap came up and emptied his bin bag into the lake beside us!).
Shankar, our friendly Tuk tuk driver, took us for a trip up to see the Monsoon Palace up on the hill above Udaipur. It's quite a trek up so we had to stop halfway to prevent the engine from over-heating! The Palace building is beautiful and the views are fantastic. We didn't realise that Udaipur was so big. Unfortunately the building has fallen into disrepair and is not used the way that it could be.
It's great that it is open to the public but it could be maintained and used for so many things. We hung around with the other tourists till after sunset and then Shankar took us to visit an art gallery (shop). After a demonstration (the artists use squirrel hair brushes for silk paintings, one hair is longer than the rest to give fine detail, and the colours are made from stones. A detailed painting can take 50+ hours depending on the skill of the artist - this can be checked by looking at any faces in the painting, the experts will ensure that every one is different. They also have to visit any buildings in their paintings several times to ensure accuracy of detail!) we had the opportunity to purchase their pictures. They were stunning, but so were the less detailed pictures in the shops in town at half the price, and to our uneducated eyes they were every bit as good.
We found some fantastic restaurants in Udaipur, most of them had great views of the Lake. Some had seats like beds with a low table in the middle - what a great way to eat. We've spent
ages scheming ways to incorporate this into daily life in Ibrox on our return. It'll save us buying a new dining room table!
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