Udaipur

We arrived at half 5 in the morning from our night bus journey to the normal scrabble of rikshaw-drivers and hotel touts. We have developed a ritual of putting down bags and sitting with a cup of chai until the hectic first arrival bustle settles a bit.  The chai, on sale absolutely everwhere, is a milky sugary drink with varying ammounts of cardoman/ masala.  With the impossiblility of finding good black tea I've had to convert to this milky alternative and it's quite addictive, especially good at five am.

We took an auto-rikshaw over to the city palace to find our guesthouse.  The streets there were a maze but luckily we happened upon the right lane.  Finding our booked accomodation closed, we walked around the corner to pass the time until a sociable hour and discovered the lake.  Udaipur is known as the city of lakes and coming across one just as the sun was rising was quite magical.  We sat at the edge and watched sleepily as the flickers of purple on the water turned to light silver and then blue.  The white palaces built in the middle of the lakes began to shine as the sun got stronger.  It was awesome to be next water again after the dessert cities further north.

Our hostel was really sweet.  Run by a friendly, ancient couple it was a double story house with a central courtyard and a stairway up to the roof.  We had a double room, little lounge and en-suite bathroom all for 250 rupees (approx £3.30) per night.  It was a lovely city to chill out in.  I think living by water usually creates a calmer environment with the addition that this city was used to tourists so we werent such a novelty which allowed us to relax a bit more.  We went for a really long walk up through the town and past some of the lakes.  It was ridiculously picturesque.  The sun set as a perfect red circle over some mountains,creating silhouettes of palm trees and refracting rainbows through fountains timed to begin at this point.

The next day was the main day in the hindu festival of light, Diwali.

 

The town erupted in decorations, lights, sweets and fire crackers.  We were staying near the Jagdish Temple, dedicated to one of the forms of Vishnu and an important shrine.  All day hundreds of people flocked to the temple to pray and celebrate.  The shrine was beautiful already, a towering stone temple covered in carvings of Udaipur's symbolic elephants representing peace, and it was made even more so by the tinsel, fairy lights and strings of flowers strewn everywhere.  Even the cockroaches crawling the grounds seemed to join in the festivities, proclaiming through their scuttling the equality and balance in life so important to Hindu belief. 

In the night the number of fireworks was insane.  Kids had been lighting firecrackers all day (all week really) putting them in roads, next to doors, anywhere.  We began to keep our eyes out for the boys crouch-then-run that meant that a massive bang was about to go off.  With the tall buildings and winding lanes of the old city the echoes reverberated making the city sound like it a war.  At around half 7 the real fireworks began with a spectacular display over the lake.  We rushed up onto the rooftop and it continued for ages.  Being the festival of light the city went all out.  We met the English girls for dinner at one of the rooftop resturants that cover the skyline of the old city as we drank beer and shared India stories the fireworks continued all night.

Dan's Treat.

Dan:  "We're hiring a motorbike tomorrow to go and do some sightseeing!"

English girl: "Oh really wow.  Which one are you getting?"

Dan:  "The biggest one!"

The biggest one, a Royal Enfield and a beast of a machine, turned out to be a bit complicated so settling for a slightly simpler one we set off on an adventure.  Having assured me in a patronising tone that he had ridden heaps of times so don't worry we got off to a pretty wobbly start (Dan later admitted that by 'heaps' he meant a few times on a farm when he was 14.... hmmm).  Once the ride got smoother it was an amazing way to explore the surrounding area.  It was so liberating to ride just the two of us escaping for the first time in weeks the constant interaction with people  that is usually unavoidable in this hyper-populated country.  We had in mind some sights to see a few kilometers outside of town and had obtained the best map we could.  There is an interesting habit in India of naming roads but not having any road signs. Occasionally on big roads there will be signs to other villages or the railway station, but more often than not these will be placed in hidden or unlikely spots.  This makes finding any specific place a little bit of a game and certainly made exploring on the bike more of an adventure.  With a bit of help from some local teens also on a bike and some estimative map reading we successfully found our way to Shilp gram, a weird museum complex of fake traditional houses.  It felt like it was built for a lot more people than the handful of visitors walking around.  it was interesting to see varying architechtural styles from all over India, but a bit depressing to see troupes of puppeteers and dancers sitting in the scalding dry sun waiting for non-existant audiences. 

We went out on the bike around the lakes and then decided to try and find the monsoon palace of Sajjangarh.  Bulit high on a hilltop overlooking the Udaipur we had seen it from a far and read about it in the book.  However trying to find the road to it was really tricky.  As we wound our way around the surrounding countryside we got closer and closer but before we knew it the road had veered off in a different direction.  Enjoying the ride we kept going and found ourselves passing through tiny remote villages and huge mountainscapes.  Every so often we'd pass a cow decorated for Diwali with paint, tinsel and henna spots or handprints.  We'd say hello to these holy cows who would either ignore or look at us with an expression to be taken as silent wisdom or placid indifference.

 The road kept going until we saw a turning to go steeply up the side of a mountain.  Crawling (and stalling) up the incline we made it to the top and were rewarded with stunning views of rippling mountains.  A temple pool had been constructed and a few boys and some monkeys were hanging out there.  We walked up to the peak where a hindu shrine had been constructed along with a circular concrete viewing platform.  An awesome accidental drive.  In the far far distance we viewed the hill and a spec that was the palace we had originally aimed for.  Glad we had come that far we tuned back in the hope of finding our way this time.  Eventually, with some steep u-turns, we did find Sajjangarh.  The palace, having been desserted soon after contruction and left to it's crumbly fate, was a melancholy frame from which to view the city and mountains behind.  We caught the beginning of sunset and were thrilled with the amazing things we'd discovered that day.  Having found them on the bike they felt more personal somehow than if we'd been dropped there by a bus.

The motorbike was great.  Dan was instantly planning massive future road-trips so we'll see!