From One Extreme...

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All too soon our last Ashwini day arrived. After a final breakfast of nutella banana dosa (that well known Indian delicacy) we said a sad farewell our lovely home for the past month. 3 standardly hair-raising hours later we arrived at Kalicut airport, possibly the most underwhelming in the world. About 97 boarding pass checks later and we were on the way to Mumbai which proved far more satisfying. The novelty of air conditioning, actual bona-fide (well, almost) queuing systems and general Westerisation was almost a bit too much. Definitely so for the woman in front of us on the escalator who seemed to initially be concerned that the stairs were going to be the height of her knee and later that the stairs might disappear without warning so decided to take about a 4-step leap to the top. With baby in arm naturally. We left Mumbai as the sun was setting over the huge city, crammed as far as the eye can see with wooden houses, shanty towns and literally countless blocks of council-style flats to house the ginormous population. Then just as suddenly it was gone, the chaos replaced with an empty sea and sky blurring with heat towards the horizon where we watched a perfect golden sun fall beneath us into the clouds. Quite a contrast.

We landed in Udaipur around 8pm and the drive through the city appeared at first pretty unremarkable-standard scene of people muddled with rickshaws, cars, buses and the odd cow. We arrived at new home, Lake View Paying Guest House, a building which seems to have lost a few of its walls, offering a variety of views into neighbouring buildings, shops and building sites as you scale the several rather treacherous staircases. And then we got to the rooftop. We were all speechless (a so-far non-existent state) as we took in the 360 views: mountains silhouetted in the distance, palace on top of a distance hill lined with white lights that looks a lot like a ski lift; peak of a temple almost close enough to touch; the impressive City Palace perched on a hill only a few hundred metres away; and then the Lake. Let’s just say they weren’t lying about the Lake View. Lake Pichola is Udaipur’s centrepiece and rightly so, the main highlight being the Lake Palace (a starring feature of James Bond Octopussy), a rectangular ex-Palace now super exclusive hotel in the middle of the Lake which, along with the smaller but no less beautiful Jagmindir Palace which occupies its own lake island, light up the water every night. The banks of the lake are lined with crumbling, old and very beautiful Havelis (fancy old houses), most of which have their own rooftop restaurant adding to the twinkling skyline. We toasted our new home with a ginger lime tea before moving to our rooms complete with fan, air con and a real non-bucket style shower head. Heaven.

We started our first Udaipur morning with Lake View’s muesli (which is actually a cornflake, oat and fruit combo but still hits the spot) on the rooftop. We were only sweating from approximately 65% of our body at this point and quickly decided that the repeated claims of ‘you will die in Udaipur’ were strongly unfounded.

The morning was spent pottering around the various shops nearby, each offering their same same yet ever so slightly different selection of harem pants, jazzy bags, art work and various wooden creatures. We found about 70% of the guidebook recommended shops, hotels, restaurants and masseurs within approximately 50 metres of each other-clearly the authors decided that reviewing more than one street of Udaipur was a stretch too far! Don’t get me wrong, that book is my lifeline. Am genuinely going to find it quite bizarre not to have my every move dictated dollar sign ratings and very questionable maps upon return! There are three sections I feel it is missing though:

§ How the usage of horns in India signals everything apart from imminent danger

§ Interpreting the head wobble (a kind of side-to-side head wiggle used by almost everyone which generally means yes but also sometimes no, sometimes perhaps, sometimes, well, who knows!)

§ How best to navigate an Indian toilet or ABC to the bottom spray (or ‘spoon’ as Ali once managed to refer to it as, much to our confusion)

It seems are all the other Westerners are also treating their guidebooks with equal dependence if their restaurant choices are anything to go by. It a bizarre mixture of travellers here: head-scarved middle aged couples who have clearly done all of this before; excitable busloads of middle aged couples of varying nationalities who have clearly never done this before; groups of pretty refined middle aged couples who at first glance you would think would be much happier on an all-inclusive private beach in the Med with 24-hour G+T on tap. Then a smattering of people about our age who are divided into those who are clearly here to ‘find themselves’ and do not feel they can achieve this by acknowledging the existence of other Caucasians; very enthusasitic solo travellers ‘hello, where have you come from, where are you going next, want to see a light show tonight, fancy a camel safari next weekend, can I get your Facebook?’; and then a few normal humans who just seem to be here to enjoy themselves and see the country.

Anyway back to the shopping. We stopped off in the shop of a man who actually allowed his personality to make a breakthrough and has developed tourist hassling beyond ‘yes madam, where are you from, where are you going please come in I give you good price’. The concept that we might not actually want to buy anything, good price or not, still seems to be too outrageous. So amongst such gems as ‘cheap as chicken curry’ and ‘I will sell like hot cakes’ we (well, mainly me) bought a good degree of Indian tat before moving onto clothes. I purchased a few more sets of Ali Babas to add to my ever growing collection. We walked through most of Udaipur on a mission to find me some sunglasses which are apparently an extremely rare item. Odd considering the sky has never seen a cloud in its life and the temperature hovers happily around 40 degrees. But then again, many things in this country are odder. After an hour and about 500 shops later we had located everything from electricals to tyres to the rather ominous sounding Swastika Shop but still no protection for my by now boiled-in-their socket eyes we surrendered to an air conditioned café for a very Indian chips and sandwich. We couldn’t face the walk home (turned out our morning scoffing might have been slightly misplaced, was quite toasty by this point) so resorted to rickshaw and then spent a considerable amount of time with our new best friends Mr Fan and Mrs AC. Mrs AC seemed to have recovered from her overnight strop when at 3am she decided she had had enough of rather inefficient cooling and started to spit shards of ice into Emilie’s face. Was an interesting awakening!

Once our brains had solidified again we went in search of a pool to use in the local hotels. Which it turns out are even more of a rarity than sunglasses. Obviously, afterall who would want to use a swimming pool in 40 degree heat? Madness I hear you cry. We found one in a nearby hotel however were told very firmly ‘only for guests’. We tried to point out that they didn’t actually seem to have any guests but nothing doing. We eventually struck gold with a hotel that Han had found online which is located up a rather ominous looking side street lined by quasi-rabid dogs but turned out to be a gorgeous converted heritage building. A very empty gorgeous heritage building. Due in no small part I am guessing due to the fact no-one would know they are there and, unlike the other gazillion guesthouses, they don’t seem to feel the need to advertise. We climbed the many, many floors to the roof which turned out to be totally worth it as we were rewarded not only by a fantastic lake view but also a film set-they filmed several scenes of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel on this very rooftop (seriously considering offering to overhaul their publicity strategy in return for curry). The pool was a perfect size however unfortunately looked like someone had tipped a forest into it. A very mouldy one. We were reassured that it would be sorted in two days and so negotiated a daily price for our time here before heading back for another rendezvous with our favourite cooling devices before readying ourselves for dinner. The footbridge over the lake by 7pm was already lined with various groups of Indian youths, all of which attempted the ever imaginative chat-up line of ‘hello?’ Find it extremely baffling how even here, with a white person at every turn in low season and more body parts covered than is surely healthy in this climate, we are still a novelty. Have developed a genuine sympathy for celebrities since being in India, it is going to be quite a shock to the ego on return when I am able to walk down the street without being waved at, ‘hello-ed’, offered a good price for things I don’t want, offered a picture with someone on my own camera and vaguely propositioned every 5 metres.

We had decided to try one of the guidebook-recommended ‘Top 5 restaurants with a view’ called Ambrai, located in one of the considerably fancier hotels. There seems to be a bit of a trend here for lovely hotels to position themselves at the end of alleyways, the dodgier looking the better. This one turned out to be well worth it as we were rewarded by a candle-lit garden restaurant right on the waterfront. The food was not as spectacular as the prices but the view was fairly priceless. After an extortionate rickshaw home we settled in for the night with our new kettle!

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