Udaipur 01/07 – 01/09

Peter admires the stonework at Jagdish Temple.

Jagdish Temple

A woman gives money to a Baba.  Baba's are religious gurus or priests.  They sit and think and take in the sun. 

Crazy mod stained glass at the City Palace.

View of Lake Pichola and hills beyond from the City Palace.

Room at the Sheesh Mahal (Palace of Glass and Mirrors) inside City Palace.

Courtyard at the City Palace.

Me at the City Palace.

Rest stop on hike up to Monsoon Palace...destination can be seen in the distance.

View of Lake Pichola from Cable Car Summit.

Time for rest and taking in the views at the Moon Palace.

Some sights from our hike up to Moon Palace.

Udaipur street full of color, murals, and electric lines.

Indian style building.  If there is a tree in your way, you work around it.  We have seen this approach everywhere.

Udaipur street - visual chaos.

I was reckless and did not avoid photography.  I also climbed on it.

Sunset view from our hotel room.

Last meal in Udaipur

It was a long and bumpy bus ride to Udaipur but completely worth the trip. We arrived in the evening and found our hotel to be spotless and comfortable and the city cleaner and quieter than most Indian cities. Udaipur is located along a series of lakes in Rajasthan and surrounded by hills. It's a town full of palaces, one of which is located on Lake Pichola, now a fancy hotel. The antibiotics and fresh(er) Udaipur air turned out to be just what we needed.

Our intentions of taking it easy, though, did not last. Our first day we visited the main temple in town. Jagdish Temple is an extraordinary structure composed of intricately carved stone and built by Maharana Singh in 1651. Although we were not allowed to photograph the interior of the temple, here unlike in other Hindu temples we were allowed inside. There was a great deal of commotion as people lined up to pray to Vishnu whose image was portrayed at the main altar. There was an elderly woman sitting on the floor selling small chunks of rice and a man in front of the altar dispensing water. People ate the rice, drank the water and then ran their hands over their heads with the water. There was also a flame on the altar. People would capture the flame or smoke and then run their hand over their heads with this as well. I am not sure what any of this meant and there was quite a bit of chaos inside. Afterwards, we visited the City Palace. This was a spectacular complex located along Lake Pichola, composed of a series of palaces interlinked by a labyrinth of narrow passageways. Apparently it was specially planned this way to avoid surprise attacks by invaders. Each palace has its own particular style, one is made up of glass and mirrors another of pearls and intricate mosaics. We spent a good portion of the afternoon weaving through the passageways between palaces.

The next day we had “nature day.” We began by taking a cable car ride up to the top of one of Udaipur's hills and then hiking down. We ran into a very scary playground for children with rusty monkey bars, steep slides made of stone and others of poker hot metal breaking your fall at the end with jagged bits of rock. We then decided to hike all the way up to the “Monsoon Palace,” built to watch monsoon clouds and located in a wildlife preserve. We did not see any wildlife here, but we did see an elephant walking in the street on the way to the preserve. It took us a good 2 hours to hike up to the top. We were the only hikers there. The palace itself is not worth much of a visit, but the views from the top and the feeling of accomplishment were awesome.

As I post, we are on an overnight train to Delhi. Train and bus connections from Udaipur to Jaisalmer (next stop on our itinerary) turned out to be overly difficult. Plus we are pretty much ready to move on from India. There are only so many dosas one can eat and masala tea one can drink. The next leg of the trip was going to be Nepal. But, due to weather conditions, we are going to opt out. It's probably best not to hike in fog and sleep in freezing mountain teahouses. We will just have to add Nepal to the “to do list” for next year. Sometimes life can be really hard like that and one cannot have everything one wants. Sigh. So, next stop Delhi and then we are off to Bangkok.