Udaipur

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22nd Jan 2012 Udaipur (day two)


I sleep badly and so I sleep late. Rizwan makes me a hearty breakfast of banana porridge and cheese, tomato and onion omelette on the rooftop of the hotel. I look out over Udaipur to see many people on the rooftops; women hanging clothes, children and grownups playing with kites, men sleeping, others cooking. I love the rooftop culture in India, it's where everyday life happens.

Rizwan arranges a sightseeing tour for me today and later I meet my tuktuk driver, Firoz. He is a sweet man and I quickly see that he is sincere. I tell him I don't want to do any shopping and he is the first Indian to joke dryly with me. He says "But then madam, how will I make my commission if you do not shop?". He explains that many people in india make their money this way but this is not his business. He runs sightseeing in Udaipur from his tuktuk but also owns a car with which he drives tourist longer distances to Jaiselmer, Jodhpur, Jaipur and anywhere else for the right price. By the end of the day I am ready to recommend him to everyone I see!



On top of the usual tourist things, he also takes me to a local spice, fruit and veg market. I get some great snaps and try raw unprocessed sugar cane for the first time. Something I have discovered is that in India, if you can avoid the main tourist areas you will have a much richer and more pleasant experience. Some of my best days have been when I have wandered freely through local bazaars and not seen another foreigner. The local people are warm, friendly and curious. They speak to you like another human being and are genuinely interested in who you are and where you're from. Many love to have their photo taken and unlike the tourist areas don't immediately ask for money afterwards. This is the India I love.



I'm feeling pretty frazzled with coughing by about 4pm so Firoz takes me home and I get and early night. I had henna painting booked for the following morning.



Udaipur (day three)



A local lady arrived, called Jodi, with her little girl aged two. She speaks little English but we communicate well enough. She rushes through my painting and has done both my hands in just 30 minutes. The pattern is not as detailed as I would have liked but it is beautiful. I meet a girl from China, her actual name is Yangxiou but she introduces herself as Astrid.



We wander down to the city palace together stopping in at a few of the market stalls along the way. We spot a brown leather messenger bag that we both want and later on that day after losing each other find that we arrive back at the shop to buy it at exactly the same time. The man in the shop takes a paler one for Yangxiou and adds oil to darken it. We have our names inscribed in Hindi and pay a very good price.



Having spent most of the day wandering the museum of the city palace I'm bored and tired so I go for an Ayurvedic massage. Its divine and the lady uses an oil I'm familiar with. After relaxing me almost to the point of sleeping she beats me around the head and calls it a head massage. I'm fully awake but rejuvenated when I come to leave and only after her and her husband have fed me masala chai and given me a gift of a small fabric covered book.



I get back to the hotel, pack up the last of my things, pay my bill which for four nights accommodation, three days breakfast, dinner and countless chais in between comes to about £25!



Firoz collects me and my copious amounts of luggage and drops me at the train station where I am stared at once again. It occurs to me that when I get back to the UK and no one stares at me that I will feel anonymous once again. I find it kind of sad.



On the train I share a cabin with an English speaking Indian couple and a foreign couple, he from Germany and her from Russia. Much older than her, I find him acutely irritating as he bad mouths India for being so backwards and under-developed, right in front of a lovely couple who's country it is that he's bashing. I find myself defending the country as best I can but he is so negative. The ridiculous thing is that this is his second time here!! What's worse is that he then proceeds to stare at me and in a much less innocent way than the Indian men do. I put up my sarong curtain and try my best to ignore him. He makes my skin crawl more than the the thousands of cockroaches who seem to have made this particular train their home.



I don't sleep at all as I wake every time I feel something foreign against my skin, freaking out at the thought that a cockroach had found its way into my sleeping bag. Or even worse, the disgusting German guy!! I squeeze off the train, laden with bags and exit the station. I am bombarded by rickshaws and taxi drivers shouting in my face, on the meter, on the meter. 'Rubbish,' I shout back at them. I agree a fixed price of 400Rs to travel the one hour journey to Andheri. It takes us half that time just to get out of the train station. The traffic is almost standstill, the air is stiflingly hot, the slums either side are filled with people who's daily lives trickle on, the smell of rubbish rotting in the heat hits my face and a cover my mouth withy scarf, not that it aids me much.

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