Day 29 - Onwards to Udaipur

At 5:00am the alarm sounded. I’d not had much sleep due to the worsening cold which had begun to appear on the morning of our last day in Jaisalmer. Anyway, were all packed and ready and waiting in the courtyard well before the 5:45am meeting time. With some pre-arranged tuk-tuk support we bade farewell to our hotel, their pug and their dachshund (the girls loved them) and putted off to the Jodhpur buss station for a 6:30 departure. Not surprisingly the place was dusty and noisy and chaotic even at that hour. Thankfully the bus was a proper coach, not just a local bus with open windows as we’d feared. Our bags securely stowed underneath we boarded, found our seats and settled in for the six hour ride to Udaipur. 

About two hours into the driver pulled over at a shop by the highway to let his passengers “stretch their legs”, get something to eat and enjoy a nice hot chai masala tea. The landscape was still dry and rocky and dusty with little shrubs dotting the scene here and there. Even though it’s only about 300kms from Jodhpur to Udaipur and even though the road is pretty straight and flat it still takes six hours because the vehicles can rarely travel above 80kph – due to the ever present risk of hitting a cow. The same road rules seen in cities also apply on the open road. That is, there is only one rule – drive where ever you want to drive just don’t collide with anything else – another reason why the vehicles travel so slowly, making the journey so long.

By the time we’d reach Udiapur some small hills had begun to appear in the landscape, not so much hills as rocky outcrops. Still very desolate country. Udaipur is just a quiet backwater with a population of just 1.5 million. It’s the playground of the rich and famous and the maharajahs, being built around a man-made lake that dates back a few centuries as the maharajah at the time thought it would be nice to have one of his palaces in the city, one on a nearby mountain top and one in a lake. No lakes were apparent at the time so he made his own.

Udaipur residents take great delight in having their home town as the setting for a number of well known Hollywood movies including Roger Moore’s James Bond in Octopussy and a few scenes from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. We ate dinner at a restaurant where one such scene was filmed and I actually remember the scene as it was at an important juncture in the movie. I digress, but after our wanderings in Udaipur that day, which I’ll get back to, we went to this restaurant’s open-air rooftop. What a magnificent setting, watching the sun sink behind the mountain range and the city and the lake light up below and the food was good and not expensive.

After we’d arrived at our hotel, once again belied by the street it was on, we walked as a group into the city to orient ourselves. We’re here for two full days. Anant took as to the lake’s edge from where our evening cruise will leave and then to a nearby fabric shop. I hate fabric shops. Anyway, the girls all loved it while Eric and I fought over who was going to sit in the “husband’s chair”. By now I was feeling pretty lousy but there was still a long day ahead. Kerry bought some scarves and Irene was measured up for an outfit she liked. Next we visited a purveyor of silver trinkets which the girls thought were way over-priced and finally we attended a demonstration of miniature art, a technique for which this area if Rajisthan is famous. The painting themselves are not necessarily small but the art is in the fineness of the detail applied by the artist, sometimes using brushes as fine a one squirrel hair. The paints are all sourced from the natural elements in the district, not man-made. Kerry bought a circular table decoration for home.

Five-thirty and our appointment with the lake cruise was approaching so we grabbed a coffee and a bite to eat down by the dock. I was starving. Colds do that to me. Just as the sun was setting our barge pushed off from the dock and we sailed into the sun set, getting some great views of the city behind us and a close-up of the Lake Palace, which is now a 5-star hotel. There are two other islands set in the lake, one quite small and insignificant and the other big and bold as brass. It’s the party island and there was a big, noisy wedding going on as we sailed past. This is the other extreme of the Indian culture. If you don’t have a thousand people at your wedding then you’re a nobody. The whole of the island was taken over for this wedding. There were dancing girls in the dock to greet the guests who were announced by the MC as their boat arrived at the dock, supported by eight finely dressed men sitting on the eight larger-than-life stone elephants that guarded the entrance to the hotel. A constant stream of impeccably and traditionally dressed men and their equally impeccably and traditionally dressed partners were making their way to the dock as we sailed away.

Back at the dock we made our way directly to the roof-top restaurant to soak in the stunning view as night descended on Udaipur. All around the town we could see the fireworks exploding from other venues no doubt hosting other weddings. This is wedding season, after all. Our scrumptious dinner done Kerry and I caught a tuk-tuk back to the hotel while the others walked. Cheryl knocked on our door later in the evening offering some drugs which might give me some respite from the cold, which I very gratefully accepted.