Udaipur, Rajastan, India

  Udaipur, India
Sunday, April 6, 2008

Before I start the blog entry for this week, we both sat down during one of our train or bus rides and made note of some everyday Indian things that we never mention in the blog but we have just come to take it as part of everyday life:

1. Seeing people sitting on the roof or hanging off the back bumper of buses.
2. Cows and goats consistently causing chaos on the roads, they just won't move.
3. Boys and men walking around holding hands or with their arms around each other.
4. Transvestites get on to trains, clap their hands twice and expect people to give them money.
5. Men and boys poo-ing in open fields in full view of everyone.
6. Mothers who see white people and sent their kids over to us to beg.
7. Minimum of 4 people per motorcycle.
8. Minimum of 10 people per car (usually 15-20).
9. Women carrying ridiculously huge loads on their heads.
10. Kids working on building sites (in one case we saw a group of kids no older than 12 working on a new motorway).
11. Seeing elephants, monkeys and other wildlife daily.
12. Cows are like dogs. They roam the streets freely day and night, when they feel like being milked they stroll back into their house (well owners house) get milked and stroll off again.
13. Being awoken most mornings by the muslim call to prayer from the local temple.
14. Being constantly stared at by people who've never seen white people before (even more so now in northern Indian as there are mush less white people here than in the beaches of Goa for example.

Now that I have that off my chest, lets get on with the blog. We left Mumbai last Monday at 1pm, arrived in Udaipur at 7am Tuesday - another long uneventful trainride apart from a breif conversation with a chap about cricket. He loves Irish cricket coz we knocked Pakistan out of the World Cup last year (and all Indians hate Pakistani's). He could name the whole team and told me that some of the players play their club cricket in India, which was news to me. On arriving in Udaipur we got a tuk-tuk with a driver who was a bit of a character. His name was Samshu.

Maharaja's Graveyard

Jain Temple

He was calling one of the other tuk-tuk drivers gay coz he picked up two men, then he insisted on bringing us for Chai (Indian tea with milk, ginger, cinnamon and other spices). All we wanted to do was check into a hotel. Anyway we had the chai and a bit of craic with Samshu (he kept calling Lydia Miss Ireland - "So what are your hobbies Miss Ireland?" We checked into a lovely hotel, The Anjani Hotel, huge room, free internet, digital TV and a swimming pool for E13 per night. We were so tired from our 20 hour jouney we were not up for doing much on the Tuesday. Just went for a quick walk round the town. Met an elephant and took a few pics with him. Went to a roof top restaurant for dinner and saw a nice sunset. We also realised during the day that the Rajastani people were a lot more friendly than the people we met in the tourist resorts in the south. They were just genuienly nice and not looking for money or anything. Was on the web before I went to bed and the phone rang in the hotel reception. The night receptionist spoke no English so he asked me to take the call, went something like this:

Me: Hello?
English Chap: Hi, I was wondering if you have any rooms free tomorrow night?
Me: Eh, I'd say so yeah, there's a load of room keys hanging up here behind the reception so I presume they're all free rooms. 
English Chap: So if I turn up in the morning will there be a room free?
Me: Eh I don't actually work here, the receptionist just can't speak English.
English Chap: Oh right, whats the hotel like is it nice?
Me: Ah yeah its grand, free internet, swimming pool, nice rooms.
English Chap: Cool, how much did you pay per night.
Me: They wanted 1200 Rupees but I got them down to 800.
English Chap: Ok, cheers mate. Thanks for your help.

Thought it was very funny!

Udaipur at Night

With Elephant

Met Samshu at 10am on Wednesday morning. We asked him to take us on a 3 hour tour of Udaipur. First we went to the local market. It was very good, really colourful and the people were really nice. Asking us to take photos of them then show them on the camera display screen. They thought they were on telly, their reaction to seeing themselves was so funny. After the market we went to the Maharaja's Graveyard. The Maharaja's are the most important people in the city, like an emperor or something. And a graveyard is probably a wrong discription as they are cremated, then they build huge marble memorials (like tombs) to the Maharaja. The guide who took us round the graveyard told us some interesting things including the fact that up until the 1980's is was very common for the wife/wives of Indian men to throw themselves into the fire as their husband was being cremated thus burning themselves to death. It was a sign that they loved their husband so much they couldn't bear to live without him. Crazy, but apparently its still being carried out around India in more subtle ways i.e. deliberatly poisoning their own food on the night of the funeral. After the graveyard we went to see the Jain temple. Don't know too much about the Jain religion but from what I gather it's a form of Hindu but more strict. The Jain people don't eat any sort of meat or animal products including eggs and dairy and they don't wear leather. Strict Jains carry a type of sweeping brush everywhere with them and brush the path in front of them in case they stand on and kill any insects. After the Jain temple we saw a Hindu temple and met the family who take care of the temple. They invited us into their house and it was interesting to watch one of the girls make bread in very basic conditions. After the temples Samshu took us to the Princess Gardens where we saw our first Common Langurs. They're much bigger than the monkeys we've seen in the rest of India. Some adults looks as big as a 10 or 12 year old boy. They're a grey white colour with white heads and black faces and since we saw them in the Pricess Gardens we've seen loads of them in Rajastan.

At the market

With local Hindu Family

The Gardens themselves were beautiful loads of plants and trees in bloom and loads of water features. At this point we were loving our 3 hour trip with Samshu but after the princess gardens it took a turn for the worse. First he brought us to this workshop where artists make replications of ancient Indian artwork. It was interesting at the start to see the artists at work and explaining to us about how they make their colours (mostly from ground down rocks but yellow from cow pee!). The amount of detail, time and effort that went into the paintings was unreal. But then we were ushered into a gallery and pressured to buy something. Eventually we left without buying anything and the chap that was showing us round seemed really pissed off. To top that off our next stop off was another workshop, this time a place where they make traditional linens. We told Samshu we weren't going in so I think he got the message that we were pissed off. On the way back to town we saw our first camels, a lot bigger than I expected and starting to worry about our camel safari in Jaisalmer now!
On Wednesday evening we made the trip up to the Monsoon Palace via a "traditional village" where everything was staged (village life, signing dancing etc.) - wouldn't recommend it at all. The Monsoon Palace has fallen to ruins since James Bond's Octopussy was filmed there but the sunset view was very nice. To top the evening off we had dinner while watching an Octopussy DVD on the rooftop of a restaurant with a crazy couple from Dundalk. It was unreal watching a 25 year old film while looking around the city it was filmed in and realising nothing at all had changed.

Princess Gardens

Rajastan Sunset

On Thursday morning we set out to do our own sight-seeing. We started with the Jagdish Temple, the main Hindu temple in Udaipur and then walked to Bagore Ki Haveli and old palace on the banks of the lake. The lake views from the palace were really good and it's museum is home to the worlds biggest turban! It was really hot in the afternoon so we put the sight-seeing on hold for a couple of hours and put the hotel pool to use. The water was feezing but it was really refreshing. After we thawed out we walked to the City Palace and Museum. They charge 200 Rupees if you want to bring a camera in so we didn't pay, telling them we didn't have a camera. Fools! Inside we took a few pictures but there really wasn't much to see. After the palace we were supposed to take a boat trip around the lake but we couldn't find the jetty where the boats left from. By the time we found it it was 5:10pm and we discovered that the last bout for ther evening left at 5pm - crap! That evening we went for dinner in a fancy hotel. The surrounding were really nice but the food was nothing special and overpriced. All in all we really enjoyed Udaipur and discovered that the people of Rajastan are genuinely more friendly than the people we met in southern India.