Pedalos and Sunstroke

---

---

We only stayed in Jodhpur for 1 day more as we got all the sight seeing out the way in one whole day and were quite up for moving on! Meharangarh Fort towering above Jodhpur was really amazing and we spent the good part of about 4 hours just wandering around listening to the audio tour you get free with the entrance fee , now I'm not big on audio tours but this one was really good! Some of the rooms inside the palace part of the fort were truely stunning with rainbow coloured windows and cushions and lavish paintings. The Maharaja's who lived here for 500 years certainly had it pretty comfortably! The views from the ramparts of the fort were also amazing, the blue city which hadnt looked particularly blue from street level suddenly was stretched out infront of us like some weird urban sea. It was only from up here that you really got the impression of how high up the fort was above the city! Inside the fort Katie decided she wanted to get her palm read, which she did, and said some bits had been scary even if others had been a bit vague! Always the skeptic I thought I'd give it a whirl. Supposedly I'll live to 81/82, have high blood pressure at 48 when I'll also reach the most productive period in my life. Oh yeah and as for my personailty I get really angry and like to break things. The skeptic remains skeptical! After our hours in the fort we went off to the Jaswant Thada - a white marble tomb for one of the Maharajas - nicknamed the Taj Mahal of Jodhpur it didnt quite live up to the hype but was a nice peaceful spot all the same! To end off our day of sightseeing we got a rickshaw out to the Umaid Bhawan Palace. It was built by the British in the 1920s for the current Maharaja - Umaid Singh to have as his residence. Its now mainly a luxury hotel with rooms up to 1500 quid a night! Although it is still home to the current Maharaja of Jodhpur-Marwar. It looked impressive from afar so we thought it was worth a look and payed our 50R entrance fee. The building was very impressive colonial architecture but we found the whole place to be so pretentious! We were only permitted to go into this poxy little museum at the side with colonial tea pots and antiques etc. When we tried to get to the front to get a snap of the building as a whole the guard stopped us from passing through the front gate! What a joke! Unimpressed we went back to the Clock Tower/Market area. Strolling past a drinks cafe we noticed the English guy we'd chatted too in Pushkar who'd been really nice and recommended the books - have read both now and both were brilliant, especially Shataram, defo recommended! We grabbed a Saffron Lassi and had a little catch up in where we'd been and where he'd been! Sadly it was only brief as he had to catch his bus to Bikaner as he was off to see the rat temple too! It's funny how you can see the same faces all over India! Thought it was about time I braved some of the tasty looking street food on the way back to the hotel and got some samosas which were pretty good! That evening we got chatting to an English couple at the hotel and ended up having dinner with them which was nice, we also booked our bus for the next morning to Udaipur!

The next morning was a mad rush to get up, wolf down some breakfast and grab a rickshaw to the pickup point for our bus at 7.30am. The first rickshaw took about 10 minutes to about 7.15 and dropped us off where a couple of busses were filling up. Neither were our bus! So we headed to the main road in search of another rickshaw. We found possibly the slowest rickshaw in the history of all time, being overtaken by everything on the road except the cows. The driver wasnt great with his English and seemed convinced that we wanted to go to a hotel! Eventually he took us to the office of the company who runs the bus, by this point we were convinced we'd have missed it as it was 7.35! The man at the bus company said it was probably gone but he'd ring them to say we were on the way.. After showing the rickshaw driver exactly the same bit of writing on the ticket that we had shown him, in both Hindi and English, he suddenly seemed to know where to go! When we got to the pick up point the bus was running later than us... Thank God! The journey itself was a relatively painless 7 hours, it noticeably got much greener and more tropical as we headed south! So we arrived in Udaipur - the Venice of the East at about 3pm and found a nice hotel for only 250R with a huge window looking out onto the lake and its magnificent lake palaces. As usual we went for a walk around to gain our bearings a bit and ended up walking through the back entrance of the City Palace and into the museum which is not free! We took advantage of our good fortune and looked around for a bit. In the main courtyard there was a seriously big event being set up with stages, lighting and everything, we asked one of the staff and they said it was a big wedding function! A few days later we found out it was for the daughter of some important government minister. We went down to the side of the lake and were surprised to see women washing themselves, seemed strange for ultra conservative india although they were clearly doing well at concealing themselves from the prying male eyes not so far along! Later on we sat on the rooftop reading for a bit, when the sun set the magic of Udaipur really hit me! The sun set behind jagged mountains behind the lake and turned the whole lake orange, it was beautiful. Shortly after we heard James Bond music coming across from the hotel next to ours - it was clearly one of the infinite number of Octopussy showings in Udaipur. Udaipur and its lake palaces were used as a filming location and hence its shown everywhere! We nipped across, had a cheap dinner and watched it. It was very strange watching such a British film on a rooftop in India!

The next day we decided we'd head out on the lake and instead of going by one of the organised boats we rented a pedalo! It was hilarious and within an hour we did pretty much a full circuit of the lake (the lake is about 3km long) convincing ourselves that it was further than any pedalo had gone before. We passed through a patch of Algie and for a fleeting moment of worry we thought we were going to get stuck as it clogged up although we broke free! Knackered from all the exercise we chilled at the hotel for a bit before venturing out to a travel agent to look into getting down to Mumbai. We had originally planned to break the 16 hour journey up with a stop off of one night in Ahmedabad - a huge city but with not much to see - but as all trains were booked solid we decided that we'd just have to get a bus and decided to bite the bullet and do the 16 hour ride in one trip! Strange to think we've done our last train in India! We planned to leave on Sunday afternoon arriving into Bombay on monday morning - leaving us 4 whole days before meeting Rob and flying to Goa. Time has flown! We briefly looked round the Jagdish Temple - an impressively carved Hindu temple taller than our 6 story hotel, before just chilling out again and having dinner on the rooftop.

The next day was a bit of a write off, we were feeling pretty groggy and just sat on the roof reading. It was really windy and hence we didnt really feel the force of the midday sun, this was to be our downfall later that afternoon as we began to suffer from some pretty nasty sunstroke! I collapsed into bed at about 4 in the afternoon and didnt leave until the next morning - sleeping on and off and fighting back sick feelings! Today we still feel a little drained altho its improving, we went to a bookshop and picked up a few more to last us through the bus journey and onwards! I went for The Godfather and To Kill A Mocking Bird to read after I finish The Alchemist. I've never read so much in my life! We chilled on a rooftop for a bit before coming here - nothing too exciting to report! We were planning to go up to the monsoon palace (a big castle up on a mountain which looks really impressive) but as today has been slightly murky (although still havent seen a cloud in about 2 weeks!) we're planning on going up tommorow before our bus at 3.30pm to get some better views! 16 hours on that bus is not going to be much fun! Hopefully we can get some sleep! Strange to think that after all the places we've been, we're down to just the final 2 - Mumbai and Goa. Crazy! Keep in Touch! x

---

Photos

Jodhpur from Fort
Now the nickname 'blue city' makes sense!

Lake Palace
From our little pedalo - Octopussy was filmed here!