Thursday 21 January 2010

On the way to and in Udaipur

We have both been ill the past few days. We both had sore throats when we left Aurangabad. These symptoms then turned into full blown colds with runny noses and coughs to boot....Nice..Anyway we are starting to feel better now after dosing ourselves up with tablets, medicines and nasal spray.

So before we got to Udaipur we hung around all day in Aurangabad and then headed for the coach station. When we arrived it was clear everything wasn't good as we were passed on to a next door location. We were then told that our sleeper coach was not available and we had seats instead. We were then taken to another location and when the coach arrived, it was a sleeper..Ok we thought....The ride was bumpy but just as we were falling asleep about 21:30 we were offloaded onto another coach. It wasn't the sleeper...It was the seats....

We arrived in Ahmedabad about 8am the following morning and caught a rickshaw to the train station. There we decided that we would book into a restroom at the station and sleep a bit as we were both feeling bad with our colds and lack of good sleep. We later ventured from the safety of the station in the hope of finding a decent food restaurant (selling meat dishes). We failed and quickly headed home due to the pollution levels making it difficult to breath. We then caught a rickshaw to the other side of town heading for a recommended restaurant. We got there, found it and found that it was closed for renovation..We went back to the station and back to bed.....

We got the train ok that night at 23:00 and had a fairly good (but bouncy) journey to Udaipur. We arrived 30 mins early the next morning (and didn't realise again that we had reached our destination) and caught a taxi to the Lal Ghat area to look for accommodation.

We found a really nice place which is right in the middle of everything that is going on. We have been taking it really easy here and have not ventured very far, but we have been to the top of a close by hill which has a really good views over the whole of Udiapur.

The city is called the "Venice of India" and the part we are in has a large lake in the middle (lake Pichola) and is flanked by the Aravalli hills to the west with the city sprawling out from there. The streets are really narrow and the guesthouses and restaurants head in an upwards direction all claiming to have lakeside views. Having the best view, or having been mentioned in the last edition of Lonely planet seems to be the main priority here and I'm sure that there neighbours just add another level to their building just to get that little higher... and the best view......As the place has suffered from earthquakes in the past, I'm not sure that is the best policy, but there you go!

There are also a lot more tourists here, which on one hand is ok because we don't stick out as much, but on the other hand means that its a bit too touristyand prices are higher. You cant have it both ways though and we both like it here.

I had my first travellers haircut yesterday.. A local barber kept asking me to come to have a haircut, so I did. When I sat down he proceeded to lather up my face and give me a cut-throat razor shave. I thought we had misunderstood one another but was relieved when he proceeded to cut my hair after. That's the first time I have ever had a shave that way and probably the last as my face was burning after, probably because it has never been shaved so closely before lol,,,We've also both invested in large shawls to use on the sleeper trains because its cold on them at night and we have both bought handkerchiefs which we have taken to wearing "bandit style" when the smoke and crap belching out of the vehicles gets too much.

We also visited a localIndo-Aryan temple which I enjoyed as the people inside were playing music and celebrating there religion. It all seemed rather jolly ;-) and the city palace which to be honest we both found a little dull.

We leave tomorrow night at 22:20 on a sleeper train to Jaipur.


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