Sight seeing and farewalls (sort of)
Trip Start
Oct 05, 2008
1
8
13
Trip End
Apr 26, 2009
Udaipur,
Rajasthan,
India
Thursday, October 16, 2008
We started of the day with visiting the City palace and were greeted with the usual set of guides at the entrance vying for our attention and naturally money. Now the people at our hotel had told us that we should have a full tour which would last like 2.5 hours or so, and this would have detailed explanations etc. However the guide who beckoned us did not want to do this but instead an hour or so only. To make it worse he wanted the amount that we were told the 2.5 hour should cost. I managed to compromise with him somewhat and did a 2 hour tour for the same amount.
During the tour we bumped into a girl who I had briefly met at the guest house. Her name is Laura and she is from Brazil. I saw that she was on her own and not with a guide etc, so invited her to join us which she happily did.
After the tour was over, Ben and Amanda wanted to head back to the hotel but both I and Laura wanted to continue sight seeing so decided to take a pleasant boat trip across to the Lake Palace.
The weather was lovely but we had some time to kill before the boat ride, after having gotten the tickets. So we popped off to the nearest cafe joint and had a shake each accompanied with some nice veggie pakoras. They were very tasty and hit the spot.
The boat ride was really nice and we met two really nice couples on the boat, one of whom were staying at the very swanky hotel across the river. They told us that it cost a fortune and the rooms were amazing (each with an infinity pool). However the people staying at the hotel were well to put it bluntly rather snobbish and full of themselves. They were glad to meet sociable and down to earth people like ourselves. Yet more reason for me to stay away from such over the top places. Anyway, we arrived at the lake palace and had a lovely drink, at an expected high price tag. Shame about the works they had going on in the palace, which spoiled its atmosphere.
I headed of back to the hotel, while Laura carried on with shopping etc.
At about 5:30pm we all packed up and said our goodbyes to the hotel staff including Deep who had gone and gotten us flower necklaces in the traditional Indian way to say farewell to friends. It was very touching and everyone felt a sadness about leaving.
We left for the train station and this is where all the drama began...
We were originally on the waiting list at places 7-8-9, but when we got to the station we were told that we were only moved up to positions 1-2-3. Gutted!
I proceeded to talk to the people at the relevant ticket window but to no avail and was directed to go speak to the main man in charge at a separate office just round the corner. This guys name was (roughly translated) "big man" which in all fairness he was when you look at the average Indian. He asked us to come back at 6:30pm and wait in the upper class waiting room in the mean time. But it was no good as teh train we wanted pulled of without us in a matter of minutes. When we spoke to him he said that he was goign to try and get us on another train that would get par tof the way there and that we would then catch another connecting train from there. But even this train was not garunteed. So we all agreed to head back to treh Dream Heaven Guest House and make alternative arrangements (after having spoken to Deep over the phone).
We arrived back at the guest house looking rather embarassed but Deep was as always very kind and welcoming. And gave us Ben and Amandas room to stay over night.
