India - a month in

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  Udaipur, Rajasthan, India
Sunday, December 3, 2006

Greetings from Udaipur in Rajasthan, also known (by overly romantic Westerners) as the Lake City. This evning we will travel by train - First Class mind you - to Ahmedebad in the state of Gujurat. We're both intruiged by what First Class will entail. Paradoxically, it's not the best class of train travel in India. It's not even scond best. First Class actually has three more luxurious classes above it, so it'll probably be awful. But at least it's not Sleeper class (colloquially known as purgatory) or Second Class Unreserved (known, not even colloquially, as Hell).

We're just over a month in to the trip now. That's quite a depressing thought in a way but it would be churlish to dwell on it (given that 11 months of beaches, hotel rooms, and meals out await). Time has speeded up a lot. Those first few days in Delhi, miserably waiting for our luggage to arrive, seemed to last forever and a year seemed like it would last a lifetime

01 Washer-women

. Now that we're into the swing of things and everything seems easier and more familiar, each day slips effortlessly into the next and we wonder at the fact that we're already into December and 2007 is just around the corner. Still, wonderful things beckon including two weeks in Sri Lanka at the end of our time in the Indian Subcontinent. We had always intended to go to Sri Lanka but wanted to wait to see how we found India before committing ourselves. We might have wanted to flee there immediately if India proved to be too awful; or to give it a miss entirely if India was a paradise on earth. After a month I think I can say that it's neither. It's certainly no breeze travelling here and the hygiene and hassle levels (always inversely proportionate) make it a mental struggle at times, but overall we've enjoyed ourselves immensely and have found 'street life' as we call it a constant source of fascination and excitment. The trickiest thing has been to avoid being run over, since pedstrians really are at the bottom of the pile here. Anyway, we think another month in India will do us nicely and so a couple of weeks in Sri Lanka to herald the new year seems just right. We'll have to come back into India breifly at the end, via Chennai (Madras), to get back up to Delhi for our onward flight to Hong Kong, so we'll have a chance to say our goodbyes properly then. In the meantime, we're ready for the beach, so bring on Goa (just a shame it's three days travel away...).

02 Lake Palace

A quick word about Udaipur itself: it really is an enchanting city. The lake is full now (recent history has seen its levels drop to the extent you could actually walk to the Lake Palace) so the views and ambience are beautiful. We've been staying at the very pleasant Panorama guest house, on the north shore of Lake Pichola. At 300R for a very clean lake view room, it's an absolute bargain. The first full day here we went for an all you can eat thali feast at Natraj Restaurant in New Bapu Bazar (just 45 Rupees - about 50 pence). Then we took in the City Palace which was once majestic but is a little run down now. It's essentially a museum with lots of naff paintings etc., and neither of us has much patience for museums at the best of times (heathens that we are). Lunch at Savage Garden yesterday was excellent - I had Mullagatawny soup for the first time since being here, even though it was apparently an invention of the British Raj in India. We went for a wonderful sunset boat ride round the lake yesterday evening and then an excllent dinner at Jagat Niwas hotel, where I'd stayed nine years ago. Otherwise, we've just been taking it easy and stocking up on our reading materials for the journey south. I'm reading the Jungle Book by Kipling (part of which is set in 'Oodeypor', as he called it), which is very good although I preferred the version I had as a child because it had more pictures. We've also bought "Holy Cow" which is a traveller's tale set in India and Bronte's Jane Eyre in case we can't get to sleep in our First Class bunks...

We'll probably be in touch again in a few days time (hopefully beachside!). (T)

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03 Sunglass reflection

04 Afternoon tea

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