Leaving our camels and Pushkar behind we headed for Udaipur. However due to the canceling of a train route, it proved to be a rather difficult place to reach. The first leg of the journey was a 5 hour train ride to Chittogarh. While the people seated around us were very nice, asking us lots of questions and offering to share the food they'd packed for lunch, our other neighbors, the hordes of mice and miniature cockroaches, we're less welcome.
After reaching Chittogarh, we managed to find the bus station and bought our tickets for the final 2.5 hour haul to Udaipur. Having missed the last express bus for the day, we're were left to catch the rattletrap local bus. Fortunately our seats were right up front, so we a great view of the excitement to come. Just after sunset, when we were about 20 K from Udaipur, we came upon an accident blocking the two westbound lanes of the highway. Rather than stopping behind the line of 10-15 cars and waiting for the way to be cleared, our bus driver barely slowed as he pulled a U-turn in a roadside parking lot and headed back down the highway in the wrong direction…. Ummm ok…. No one seemed to be particularly concerned or surprised by this, including the police car we passed on the way to the accident. We drove for about 5 minutes in the wrong direction, flashing our lights at oncoming traffic, which barely seemed annoyed by the bus which had decided to turn a one way road into two. When we came upon a break in concrete divider, we pulled another U-turn, now heading west on the eastbound lanes. We even managed to overtake a fuel tanker which had pulled the same set of U-turns as us (passing when BOTH vehicles were on wrong side of the road). Never the less, we zipped past the scene of the previously encountered accident and another 5 minutes of wrong-way driving led us to another break in the barrier and we were back on the correct side, eventually arriving in Udaipur less than 10 minutes behind schedule. Why wait on an accident when there is a perfectly good stretch of road just on the other side of that barrier? Eastbound, westbound, whatever.
Our first day in Udaipur the local shop and restaurant owners kept their business closed in support of the anti-corruption protest sweeping across India. A local explained “Parents have to pay money when their child is born to get a birth certificate and relatives have to pay a bribe when a person dies to get the death certificate, you pay bribes from the day you’re born until the day you die.”
Lake Pichola
The Hindu Jagdish Temple built in 1651, we entered and were mesmerized by the women singing holy songs to the beat of a skilled drum. (no pictures from the inside)
Udaipur’s skyline
The only things that were open our first day in Udaipur where the temple and the city palace so we kept ourselves busy checking out the two attractions. This is Rajasthan’s largest palace. We have no idea who the other people in the picture are, but it's extremely common for strangers (especially young men) to ask us (especially Sue and Kristen) for a photo together. We usually decline, but we took one with this nice family and Graham took one with our camera too.
Jagniwas Island, formally the summer royal palace, now a 5 star hotel where much of the Bond movie Octopussy was filmed.
One of the many purse shops we checked out
One of the many purse shops we checked out
Some boys hand casting into Lake Pichola
A close up of the Lake, when we saw fresh fish caught from the lake on the menu our last night, we decided to steer clear.
The Jagdish temple lit up for the celebration of Lord Krishna’s birthday.
Next up we take a couple short flights and head for the beaches and famed relaxation of Goa.
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