Octopussy central

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I flew into Udaipur Thursday evening and checked into the Lake View Paying Guest House (as opposed to the non-paying version). It's only $10/night and promises hot water. The room is very cute and spacious, but alas, no hot water.
I've been chillin' for so long that I caught a cold. Actually it was all that sweating and then sitting under a fan to cool off that did it. So yesterday I wasn't feeling very well and I still drug my ass into a Tuk-Tuk and got the city tour for 3 hours or so ($10). There is always the obligatory march through some craft emporium, stores that have landmark value but which are trying to sell stuff. There is a lot of wonderful stuff available in those stores, antiques and stone statues that I would love to have, but they are our of my budget.
I visited the City Palace, which is incredibly beautiful. Always there are guides that want to show you everything, but on that one I decided to pass, since I wasn't feeling too well, and you really have to listen attentively when you are on a tour, for which I didn't have the patience. So after the City Palace I went back to my room and slept until 7am. I still feel a little shitty, but I made plans to take the night sleeper bus to Pushkar tonight, which will get me to Pushkar at 7am sunday morning. If I hate it or can't find a place to stay, I can take the night bus back, but the plan is to stay one night at least. Of course it's a weekend and there might be a lot of indian tourists, so my chances of getting a place to stay are not great. I have a cell phone, so I'll be calling ahead to see what's up.
In the meantime, I have to check out of my room at 10am and I'll be leaving my luggage here, since I plan to come back here and things will be much easier for me if I don't have to drag my stuff along.
Anyway, the sleeper bus makes another form of transportation for me. Should be interesting. I'm hoping to meet some western travellers on it, but I'm a bit prejudiced (sic) , I don't want to hang with any russians or french people, of which there are many here.
As for Udaipur, is a beautiful town, sitting on a lake. When I arrived it was night and everything was lit up. The hotels all have rooftop restaurants and I enjoyed my first night here sitting up there, marvelling at the incredible views. Since the movie Octopussy was filmed here, the movie plays in the restaurants daily. The area where I'm staying is the old city, which is a bunch of tiny streets built on a hilly area. So it's up one street, down another.
Today I plan to take a boat to the Lake Palace Hotel, which is situated in the middle of the lake and was once a real palace. Then I might go visit another palace, built on top of a mountain. But most of all, I want to find the place where the locals shop. That's not so easy, if you ask acabbie or a tuk-tuk driver, they will always try to take you to some place where they get kickbacks. Yesterday I bought spices from some place where we stopped off at, but I ended up paying way too much for the things I got. I didn't care all that much, cause I liked my driver and I want to support the economy to a certain extent. But today I'm putting my foot down, so we'll see how that goes.
I will close for now, and report back in from Pushkar.

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Comments

[StefAnton]

Hi Ruby, Thank you so much for your voicemail and it's a relief for me to read that your having a nice time. Did you receive our SMS? Have fun, we will follow you.