Udaipur

  Udaipur, India
Thursday, October 11, 2007

The bus to Udaipur from Jodhpur is a luxury bus. This means it has assigned seats above which are metal boxes that are called sleeper berths but look like ideal for cattle transportation. The best thing about this bus is it's horn. Imagine all slotmachines in a vegas casino spinning a mega jackpot at the very same time. The sound it would produce played through an amplifier is what comes closest to the horn our driver uses enthusiastically every 10 seconds or so. It is impossible to hear yourself speak - selling sleeping berths is a sick joke.

view from the hostel rooftop

Just arrived to Udaipur this afternoon and checked into the Dream Heaven Hostel with the most amazing view of the lake and the old city. This place is called the Venice of India and it certainly is very pretty. Less smelly than Venice though.

View from the other side

We had just finished planning our itinerary for the next 2 weeks and came to this internet cafe/travel agency to book a bus ticket to Pushkar. The guy asked us to wait a bit until his brother returned who is in charge of travel arrangements and thus we checked our e-mails and he started watching tv. One minute later he showed us the BREAKING NEWS: 'Terrorist Attack in Pushkar'. A bomb went off at a mosque there, killing or injuring at least 7. So it's back to the drawing board as Pushkar is out of the itinerary. I'm just writing this one quickly in case anyone hears about the bomb and wonders if we're dead/responsible.
It wasn't us!

Washing clothes

This morning, Friday 12th, it turns out the bomb wasn't in Pushkar but in a town close to it, Ajmer. And another one was found today before it went off. It's the end of ramadan and the time of many hindu and muslim celebrations that cause increased tensions between the different religious groups.

Today, after getting our tickets sorted, we plan to visit the city palace and take a boat to the lake side palace which featured in James Bond's Octopussy.

The lake palace is off-limits for poor tourists who cannot afford the exorbitant fees they charge in the restaurant or hotel, so we took a little pedalboat and treaded as close as we could get to take a few pictures instead.

Shilpgram musician

Yesterday, the 14th, we decided to walk upto the Monsoon Palace on top of a hill. The cityguide recommended a rickshaw there but we presumed it was another piece of advice aimed at infusing the local economy with as many tourist funds as possible. We were the only ones walking, it was 35 degrees hot, the road was steep and it took us 2 hours to climb the 400 meters to the palace. The road up leads through a nature reserve and just after the entrance a rustling sound from the bushes to my right startles me. A large deer pops out, looks around and brushes past us. A 100 meters further we spot a watering hole to our right. An Indian is staring at the wall behind it intently. There is a massive snake crawling around. Thick as my upper leg and at least 5 meters long! It has 2 heads! Wait, there are 2 snakes, 2,5 meters long each, entangling eachother, some sort of mating ritual I suppose. They are a few paces away and there is nothing but cold fear stopping me from going over to touch them. More to the point, there is nothing stopping them from coming this way... We quickly move on. We have only brought 2 liters of water which we start rationing halfway already. We are parched once we finally make it up and start looking for the bar. There is no bar, but some old geezer manages to locate cold cans of 7up and coke. The best 7up I have ever had.

On our last day in Udaipur we started the day with a massage. Back and legs for me, head, shoulders and face for Raquel. The last time I had a massage in Asia was 15 years ago in Istanbul when the butcher they employed as masseur punched and slapped me silly before cracking every bone in my body and topping the torture off with a demand for a tip. This time is different. Half an hour of kneading and chopping with aromatic oils aid my muscles to recover from yesterday's exhausting hike.

We pick up the tickets from the travelagent which we ordered yesterday and there's a little problem. Even though they had confirmed all tickets yesterday, it turns out now that one the trains we booked on was full and the travel agency has put us on the waiting list for a more expensive class. If we could kindly pay the difference. I don't bloody think so mate. I tell the guy that since he confirmed the availability for all trains yesterday and made us pay for it, he's going to have to pay the difference out of his own pocket. We had a deal. He says we can pay the money or cancel the tickets. I reply I'm going to keep the tickets and not pay a rupee extra. He tells us to leave his office right now. We have our tickets and have been kicked out of a place for the first time this trip. Excellent!

Sketch

Just before getting to the hotel we greet the painter family that sits on their doorstep every day working on typical Rajistani animal miniatures and admire their progress. I enquire if it would be hard for someone like me to learn how to make a simple elephant or camel painting and he immediately offers to teach me. For free, he adds. Raquel happily chats away with the family, mainly the lazy brother-in-law of the head of the family who loves chatting about money and beer. He calls me Mr Dollar and Raquel Ms Euro and has a great laugh about it each time he repeats the joke. I have chosen an elephant painting I would like to copy and Soni tells me to sketch the outline of the beast. Each time I hold up my sketch and asks for approval he sighs and says No. No what? What is not good? Not Elephant. What do you mean, not elephant? It's hardly a bloody camel now is it? Obviously the concept of constructive ciriticism hasn't quite caught on in these parts. Thankfully on my fourth try I've come close enough for him to allow me to continue. He corrects a few lines and lets me colour it in. The paint is all natural vegetable colour and mixed with water ground with a mortar in halved coconut shells.

Teacher & Student with finished work

It's damned hard, the lines have to be very fine and I struggle to get them straight. The paint doesn't flow easily and the brushes aren't as fine as Soni's completed works suggest. I gain added appreciation for the miniatures I have seen hanging around town. Soni shows me what I have to paint by example, but where his lines are straight, bright and elegantly thin, mine look wavy, dull and grossly fat in comparison. As my elephant is coming together family members and neighbours start taking a peek. Some other tourists take an interest in the workshop too and Soni seems happy. As am I, because the painting turns out pretty well for a first try despite my difficulties. When I'm done the whole family poses for pictures and we buy 2 more paintings that look just stunning now that I know how impossibly hard it must be to make them.

With the Soni family

We are sad to leave Udaipur. I can imagine that, not unlike Venice, the place may seem too touristy in high season, but when we were here it was very shanti - the Indian equivalent of zen, or relaxed.