Tuesday, November 9, 2010

More on Udaipur

So I feel a bit guilty not actually writing anything about Udaipur. So here you go...

What a beautiful city. So lovely, with its incredible palace still inhabited by the longest continuous monarchy in the world. The maharajah lives in the back and most of the palace is now open to the public, or has been turned into hotels. We arrived early in the morning and had breakfast in our hotel’s cafĂ©. This eatery became the major hangout of our trip as they have these lovely little nooks that overlook the lake. The nooks are basically window seats with a big mattress in them and a little tea table on top of the mattress. So you lounge around drinking tea watching the boats float by on the lake. We watched the sun set there both evenings we were in town.

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The palace is really incredible. A large maze of passage ways between beautiful room after beautiful room. I can’t find the words to give it justice.

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We also just wandered around the quiet roads a lot. I guess if you aren’t used to India they wouldn’t actually be called quiet, but after Delhi they were to us. We also visited the city’s park, which unfortunately includes a little zoo (we didn’t technically visit the zoo, but we did see the sad bear in an all cement enclosure). The park is lovely and afforded us our first wildlife citing – a snake and flying foxes! The snake was really long and greatly disturbing some bulbuls that had apparently nested in the tree in which the snake was crawling around. The flying foxes were sleeping in the large trees next to the zoo enclosures (I guess I can say cages in this case as it is accurate). I love flying foxes, so interesting with their wide wingspan and their funny little noses. I do know that cows do not count as wildlife sightings, but I didn't get any good shots of the snake or the flying foxes.

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Unfortunately, the train gods were not with us and although we had a lovely compartment all to ourselves on the trip down to Udaipur, we remained on the waitlist for the trip back. So we booked the sleeper bus. This would have been fine if the bus was not absolutely freezing. I generally can sleep anywhere, and the sleeper bus is actually very comfortable with actual beds and everything, but it was too cold for me to get to sleep. We arrived back on Monday, and I can’t say I was overly productive that day at work.

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