India Part 7: Udaipur
Trip Start
May 07, 2008
1
12
90
Trip End
Jan 06, 2009
Udaipur,
Rajasthan,
India
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Welcome to our India Trip part 7: Udaipur. Udaipur is famous for one thing. Octopussy! It was here that Roger Moore ran through the town tustling with tuc tucs. He also made rampant love to Sheena Easton in the Hotel Pichola which is situated on the famous and beautiful Lake Pichola accessible only by boat. Visitors to this Hotel are banned without reservations!! Udaipur is known as a fairy tale city due to its stunning, picturesque location, little winding market streets and amazing Palaces and Forts. So far, this rocked our boat!!
We got to Udaipur in the afternoon with Arif and checked into our 'Havelli' Hotel. Havelli's are also known as Heritage Hotels for their historical architecture. Hence our Hotel was centuries old with tall, steep staircases located within a winding back street of the City and overlooking the lake. Our room was ok. Stark. Basic but ok. Apart from the pillows which were like breeze blocks!
We decided to hit the town sharpish, have a beer, enjoy. However, we needed a cash machine. So we wandered around the bustling winding lanes of the City avoiding wheels of tuc tucs and hooves of cows.
Wandering around, we got lost and asked a 'white' man if he knew where any ATM's were. He was English, had a face full of beard and was riding around India on his motorbike. He was a really nice guy and it wasn't until we shook hands and said goodbye that we kicked ourselves with, "WHY didn't we invite him for a beer with us??!!"
Looking for a suitable establishment for an awfully spiffing Gin House, we stumbled upon a rooftop Hotel/restaurant which overlooked the whole City.
Shopkeepers waiting for custom!!!
While sitting on the rooftop ordering a beer, the lovely waiter then suggested we go right to the top instead for the views. So, curious, we climbed up a spiral iron staircase until we were almost in the clouds and overlooking the hustle of traffic and locals below like a little miniature village! It was gorgeous. We watched monkeys spring from roof to roof and observed locals visiting the temple opposite for evening prayer. We went for dinner afterwards in the Hotel next door to ours. It was even nicer, friendlier and offered great food. Our Hotel offered no breakfast (!) or dinner (!). And apart from the yelping Hotel Alsation that chased birds and the servant who just soaked and swept floors all day and night, we never saw any owners or any other staff at all!! We sat on a massive cushion with a small table inbetween us in the open window overlooking the lake as the sun was setting and we drank beer. Lovely. We ate and drank merrily and played cards. It was such a relaxing, picturesque night with the stars winking and the distant lights of the Lake Pichola Hotel shimmering on the surface of the lake while little Hotel boats chugged softly to and from the Hotel.
The next day we decided to go to City Palace to have a look around. It was absolutely spectacular. Really massive with the most beautiful mosaic rooms. This is the largest Palace in Rajasthan (5 acres) and although it was once just one palace, now it is several all extended on to form other residencies, museums and restaurants.
Udaipur
After this we went for a boat ride to Jag Mandir which is another much smaller palace on the lake guarded by stone elephants. Really lovely with a garden restaurant overlooking the lake. We weren't able to visit the lush, exotic gardens as guess what? You got it! closed! Every tourist attraction we want to visit is either a) covered in scaffolding or b) closed for renovation! However, this was Octopussy's lair too... we recognised the elephants!After this, we walked down through the jetty's large gardens to find trees and trees of bats! There were hundreds of them up there all flapping themselves cool in the afternoon heatwave. Quite an ominous sight! Their little pokey eyes watching you watching them.
We then got a cable car to the top of the mountain. Quite scary slowly gliding up over hundreds of trees. At the top of the mountain, we walked for about 15mins in the scorching heat to find a temple where others were entering to pray. We bypassed this to walk back down the other side towards the cable car again. The view from the top was just stunning. You could see for miles and miles. Everything looked so calm and tranquil, as if you didn't have a worry in the world. How wonderful it must be to be a bird and go off soaring amidst the clouds.
That night we decided to do something really tacky and really cheesy. We stumbled across one of the many rooftop restaurants showing the DVD "Octopussy". Well, my initial reaction to David's suggestion was scoffing noises but then I came round to it with the prospect of Gin and hot curry!! We got chatting to this really nice young couple - the girl was from Oz and the guy was from UK - and we exchanged India horror stories and were laughing until Octopussy was switched on.
Temple
Our waiter at the restaurant took our order wearing a t-shirt and jeans. When the film came on and the food arrived, suddenly he was dressed in traditional silk Indian attire with turban! Bless him! During the film, I caught him angrily scratching his head underneath his turban and fiddling with it on his head. He obviously wanted to impress us. The film was hysterical. It was a VCD pirate copy over two disks with probably the worst lip synching ever, we heard stuff happening a good 2 seconds before it happened. Very funny. And then the first half of the second disc was black and white - but the final quarter of the film was perfect.
After this, we wandered back to our Hotel via a General Store to get some water. We got chatting to this young guy who worked in there and after 2 hours of sitting on a chair in his shop we put the world to rights about India, its culture, people, the UK, our people, politics, everything. It was fascinating. I had completely sobered up by the time we said our goodbyes!
The next day we were met by our tuc tuc driver that we had met and chatted to previously. He took us up to the cable car the day before and offered to do us a City tour, so we agreed. He was really lovely and showed us photos of his whole family, all the letters he's ever received from tourists and a book of places he'd like to take us. He took us to Princess Gardens which were absolutely stunning. Massive gardens with trickling fountains (fed from an artesian well), jungle enclosures with sky-reaching ferns, orchards of exotic flowers and secluded seating areas.
woman washing in lake
Utter Bliss. Kind of Capability Brown landscaping serenity. We were also taken to Monsoon Palace. Scenes for Octopussy were also filmed here with a helicopter and fighting. It's 1100ft up in the mountains accessed by a long winding single road where apparently leopards roam free and the other side of the mountain is a lake where crocodiles live and tourists swim!! Silly tourists!! In 1883, Maharana Sajjan Singh commissioned the palace to be used as a summer retreat for watching the progress of the monsoon clouds over the surrounding area (which led to its nickname). The Palace is surrounded by the Aravelli Hills which are Heaven High. As well as surrounding lakes, the Hills and Udaipur in the distance, the Palace also overlooks the Jungle where snakes and wild tigers live. The drive up to the Palace was exhilarating as you watched the world get smaller and smaller from our rickety tuc tuc doing 5mph. It was a toss up between getting out and walking! And we had to stop halfway to let the engine cool down!! The Palace is beautiful with turrets and shadows of centuries-old dusty mosaics in sad empty apartments.
We were then taken somewhere weird but wonderful. A folk museum. While our tuc tuc driver went to pray at the mosque! Inside the museum houses the history of marionettes that apparently derive from India originally. There were dusty puppets from all over the world glaring at you from behind glass cabinets waiting to eat your liver when you weren't looking! Bit scary. There were life sized puppets hanging from the wall like scarecrows in a noose! There were tribal masks, weaponry and instruments through the ages but the best thing of all was the live puppet show.
Octopussy Hotel on the Lake
It was really funny. There was only about 7 of us in this small theatre sitting on plastic chairs. The show was conducted by just two members of staff with a 'host' who was the security guard of the museum. There were several short 'sketches' depicting a musician and his snake, a female dancer entertaining a king and also a man chasing a woman who, when he caught him turned into a man and spun around to sodomise him as he tried to run away (all good family entertainment). After a round of applause, David and I were the only ones invited to go up to the stage afterwards and look up into the 'heavens' to see the puppet handlers and how they made them dance. The 'host'/security guard then, of course, asked us for a tip completely ignoring the BIG notice beside the stage which said "Please DO NOT tip our staff"!!!!!!!!!We were then driven by our lovely tuc tuc driver to a spice market where we saw stalls and stalls of aromatic spices piled high, with children running around our feet, dogs yapping, cows meandering around crowds of shoppers and heaving sacks of tea waiting to be sold. Fascinating. Had we been self catering, we would have bought some spices to cook with but there's only so much you can get through customs!!
Finally, we were taken 'to the boss' shop'!!!!! our tuc tuc driver's boss does these exquisite fine art paintings on paper and silk of stunning India scenes and animals. They're absolutely stunning. We kicked ourselves that we just couldn't buy a framed piece of work. We were already sitting on our minute suitcases to zip them up. With souvenirs in too, the show would be over for us!! The skill that goes into these paintings is absolutely incredible, with the richest colours and attention to detail like folds of a skirt or shadows of a camel's hoof on sand or the skeletal bones of a bird. We ended up buying 2 cards. Which sounds pathetic but we could post them off and not get them too ruined amongst our underwear and flip flops!!
It was a fascinating day and we got to see the local India, not so much the tourist India which is what it is all about. Children giggling and playing in winding cobbled alleyways, wives wandering around with urns on their head and men sitting outside their small shops waiting for custom. Really interesting.
We had had a really good time in Udaipur and were actually going to miss the place. It was a small city but everyone was really friendly. Hassle ratings were very very low too - despite the tuc tuc driver taking us to a shop. It was such a breath of fresh air and we left with a very positive view of the place.
The next day we were off once again, with Arif, to our next destination. This was Jodhpur. Short but sweet with a very uncomfortable insight to it all.
Love, Lois & David xxx
