Udaipur
Udaipur is a beautiful city. Most of the town is painted white or at least whitewashed. In the middle of the town there is a semi artificial lake which in turn has a very fancy hotel and a palace in the middle of it. The surrounding countryside is a mixture of bony hills and desert wasteland, it really has an Arabian feel to the place. The place where I was staying had this amazing rooftop restaurant which had a nice view over the lake, for the first couple of hours I just sat there and took in the city and the surrounding countryside. The owner of the place immediately set about selling us some local tours to places of interest – I was waaay too tired to contemplate anything stressful after the epic journey from chennai but one place did trigger an interest, Chumblegarh which is a massive fort 84 km north of udaipur. Myself and mal booked a driver to get us up there the following day so we could take it reasonably handy on our first day.
After a while we set out to explore the town itself. Right in the middle there is a jain temple which was okay but nothing too memorable, beside it was the Maharashtra’s palace which was fantastic, if a little crowded. We spent a few hours just wandering around this huge building which had some wonderful views over the city – taking pictures required an expensive fee which being a cavan man was never going to happen but I managed to sneak one or two including one in a room which is designed to look like a hall of mirrors but in fact was just a load of identical rooms joined together, a bit head wrecking at first esp when you are wondering why you cannot see your reflection…
We had an early start the next day so after swallowing a few beers with some aussie guys we met along the way it was off to bed. The drive up to the fort was horrible. The beer here contains glycerol which is a preservative with the added side effect of giving you horrible headaches, on top of that idiot boy decided to skip breakfast in order to get a few more minutes in bed and compounds the misery by taking his malaria medication which as an antibiotic taken on an empty stomach gives you woeful heartburn and nausea. You can imagine what the roads were like… We made it up there after about 2 hours. I had to just sit down for 10 minutes in the car park to get myself together before entering the fort.
The fort itself was amazing. The main structure alone would’ve been worth the trip – perched over a thousand metres up it had wondrous 360 degree views over the local landscape. Surrounding this was a 35km heavily fortified wall giving it massive grounds. There are also 350 individual temples in the complex aswell as a village and individual dwellings that are scattered here and there. These farmer dwellings are very simple very small mud huts with a straw rooftop. The best thing about this place was the lack of tourists, it gets about 100 per day which for the size of it is nothing. The sense of abandonment, kinda like you are after discovering the place yourself. We spent 3-4 hours in this place, you could easily spend more.
On the way back to udaipur we called into another jain temple which was lovely in itself but the fort was too hard an act to follow.
The following day was an easy day for me, mal my aussie travelling companion was heading off to Bikaner in northern rajasthan, I didn’t go because I have more time and there are things between here and there that i want to see. In udaipur it is alot colder than down south, esp after sunset when the temperatures plummet to freezing point. I hadn’t expected this temperature drop so I was freezing my nuts off the first day or two. On this third day I made it my sole mission to buy some decent winter gear. Down to the tibetan market in town (reckoned they should know about chilly weather) where I picked up a granddad cardigan, the dodgiest badaclava every, I commissioned a tailor to make me a jumper out of the thickest material he had in his shop and to top it all off I bought this big granny shawl. In euros this all came to approximately 10 euros. Bargain!!! though the flip side of that is that when fully kitted out I look like I could join the mujahadeen.
I went to a dance performance that night with some kiwi girls i met in the hotel. After the episode in Kerala I was incredibly wary but I was reassured that it was only an hour long so if it was crap I wouldn’t have to endure it that long. It was far from crap though, all the performers were very talented, the spinning, the dancing, one woman balanced 10 pots on her head which in itself is incredibly impressive as the pots together were much taller than herself but on top off that off she goes to do a jig on a carpet covered in broken glass – I mean how do you learn that you can do that?
My last day in udaipur before heading for some trekking in mount abu I took a trip to the monsoon palace which along with the palace on the lake played prominent roles in Octopussy. The monsoon palace was the residence of the baddie and also where roger moore stayed while the palace on the lake was where octopussy and her troop of beautiful but deadly assassins lived – of course I don’t remember this from waay back when I watched it years back – every restaurant in this town showed the film at least once a day – invariably if you walked the streets at around 7 in the evening you would hear the chimes off the bond theme tune, made it all very surreal at times… Back to the monsoon palace, its an 8km walk out of town, the last 3km are along a winding almost vertical road so with the heat it took the guts of 3 hours to make it. Needless to say the view from up top was phenomenal, I would’ve loved to stay for sunset but I don’t like walking out in the desert on my own after nightfall – who knows what might be lurking. Back in town there was a Muslim festival commemorating the death of Mohammed’s nephew in some great battle years back – they run through the streets beating knives off their chest, sometimes drawing blood. Its quite extreme to say the least, I was hanging out with the kiwi girls at this stage and they found this unsettling as there were mobs marauding through the streets and they had heard that some western girls had gotten groped or worse on such occasions before. So we headed out of town for dinner to a place which had a beautiful view of the city at night. The food was amazing there aswell, cashew nut curry. Beautiful!!!
I left udaipur the next morning for mount abu – 6 hour bus, yipee. Though I did get to spend it with this belgian dude called Jonas who no messing is Mark Gaffney. Wait till you see the photos, its freaking me out!!!
later,
Phil
Tags: India, Rajasthan, udaipur
Phil Gill
Haha. A handsome fellow is he?
Yet again i’m starving after reading this pesky blog!! And i don’t even like cashew nuts!
Greetings from Dunshaughlin! All keeping up to date with your exploits! Sorry you have to miss out on this years oscars or whatever the Bollywood equivalent is.
The Murphia.
Just spent an hour reading all your blogs for the last 3 weeks – amazing stuff it has to be said. Must suss out this Chai drink you’re always on about.