Udaipur

From Agra we hopped on an overnight train down to Southern Rajasthan and the city of Udaipur, the train journey was as uneventful as they come as we left Agra in the dark and arrived in Udaipur the following morning in the dark!! The rickshaw to the hostel though was 20 minutes of random chat with a mad Indian who had a guestbook for his customers – what do you write in a rickshaw drivers guestbook?!? Nice seats, good views (some of the way!), was a little cramped and you drive like a lunatic!! The other thing instantly noticable in this town is the weird accent they use when talking English, seemed as if the English teacher in town was a gay Geordie – all very bizarre! Udaipur is a really nice city based at the edge of a lake and sprawling off into the distance, it is full of lavish buildings with it’s main attraction being the floating Lake Palace, a slightly ugly building (except at night when lit up!) with a few nice turrets in the middle of the lake that once was a Royal palace and is now a stupidly expensive luxury hotel. Whilst on dry land the much more impressive City Palace dominates the lakeside with its huge towers and array of odd buildings. Other than the palaces and buildings the city seems to thrive on the fact that the Bond film Octopussy was filmed here – every night in most restaurants the bad acting of Roger Moore is played out at different intervals so if you didn’t catch the cheesey wooden one-liners or the “Oooohhh James” in one place you’ll be sure to catch them in the next! But the town did seem to be missing the lycra clad bevvie of buxsom blondes that seemed to be everywhere in the film! Udaipur still has the Indian feel in terms of crazy rickshaws, people, cows everywhere and salesman but at the same time it also manages to have a slightly European feel to it, it’s quite laid back and the small streets and white buildings makes it feel like being in Spain!! Whilst here we soaked up a bit of culture in the muesum and also went to a traditional folk show from the local tribes, but best of all we took the opportunity to get out into the countryside by going for a horse ride near Monsoon Palace on some very energetic Marwari horses. We spent 4 hours trying to hold back the horses (I did anyway, Shona took hers for a gallop!) as they just wanted to run the whole time! We explored some small villages, had chai with the locals and said hello/goodbye to about 300 small children (not one of them asked for money, sweets or a pen, which was a nice change!). Then it was back to the owners ranch for curry and chapati’s before heading back town, was a cool day out.