Super tuktuk!!!!

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Udaipur is a beautiful city(the area we were in at least) and has a reputation of being the most romantic city in India... In a country that has a severe intolerance of romance and love in general thats quite a claim. We arrived in the mid-morning and set about trying to find a hotel, this didn't go as smoothly as expected and after an hour or so we decided to go for the more expensive option(500Rs per night or 7GBP) with an absolutely gorgeous rooftop and nice views over the lake with the mandatory 7pm nightly showing of James Bond's "Octopussy" in every single hotel and restaraunt in the city!!

After a few days chilling out on the roof we did the tourist thing and had a boat ride round the lake seeing the sights from the water. The lake itself was the fullest it has been for 5 years and even then we were touching the bottom every few minutes, our guide told us it was 5 feet at its deepest part!! No big mammoth crocs in here!!! the next day we had a stroll round the palace and went up to the cable cars to sunset point which was very nice indeed up on the old city walls

It seemed to me in this city that the tuktuk drivers are the ones that run the niceness... Every few minutes its "you want Tuktuk?!" to which i answer "no thank you" then the inevitable voice change and a little slower comes "You want Joint?! good... From Manali!". After a while you start to block this out.

The bazaars and markets are really good here if a little expensive but the quality of the goods seems to be better than elsewhere. We spent a lot more than we realised and soon had to pull in our belts and start some hardcore budget reshaping.

A lot of our time in Udaipur was spent chilling out on the hotel roof and getting drunk with the people there but we were in a big enough group that we took over half of the roof! Joined some South Africans from Johannesberg and we had ourselves a party!! Andrea was happy cos she had some drinking buddies she could get mashed with and james and I did a good job of that on our own!! Special Lassi's all round!!!

The time came for our little family to split up and head in our own directions: Myriam the friendly French girl went home as did Bobo and Mark the two Hungarians and that left us with six. Veerna, The Chillean, left the group also and it came time for us to move on so our team now halved in number headed out to Jodhpur for the next stop on our Rajasthan Route. Five of us left... Dropping like flies man!!

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