Udaipur: The Venice of the East

After our experience earlier that morning, Udaipur was an absolute blessing. Apart from the fact that I witnessed a minor argument between two rickshaw drivers over who could "claim" us to take into town (I gathered this from the very enthusiastic pointing and wild arm motions being made by the two drivers), the people in the town were amazingly friendly and welcoming. We got there around 1pm, soon checked into our hotel (Lake Ghat Guesthouse), and immediately made our way up to the roof-top restaurant for lunch - something we thought was unique but later found out wasn't at all. We spent the rest of the day just shopping around, fine-tuning our bargaining skills, and watching a traditional Rajasthani dance show just around the corner from our hotel (called Dhoroghar). Our nightcapper was a steamy glass of chai back at the rooftop with fireworks for the Navratri festival and twinkling lights at the rest of the surrounding roof-top cafe's around us.

Unfortunately we had to leave Udaipur the next evening, so we tried to fit as much in as possible in the next day. We got up somewhat early in the morning to head over to the infamous Cafe Edelweiss, only to find out that many other people had the same idea. We waited around for a little bit, went down to the lake to get a first-hand account of the trademark ghats (traditional gatherings of men and women by the waterside to bathe and wash clothing) that take place down at the water. I rediscovered my love for morning people watching in Udaipur. I am convinced that if you want to know what locals are really like, if you want to get a really good glimpse of the nature and atmosphere of a town, you should go walk around in the earlier hours of the morning before all the shops are open. This is when people go about their daily business, not trying to cater to you or make money off of you as a tourist but simply focused on their own needs and their own lifestyle. You can just walk around and observe and you honestly learn loads more during this time than you would any other time of the day - as long as you remain observant. It's this morning ritual that I believe connects all of humanity. I know that's a big statement, but there's no other time of day where you can almost guarantee that everybody does just about the same thing - cook breakfast, read the paper, running errands, if you're a business man then you're running around preparing for the day's commerce, etc. We may have slightly different routines, but the fact is we still all have some sort of morning routine and that's something that I find most humanistically connective.

Anyway... later that morning we headed up to Monsoon Palace, a beautiful mountain-top dwelling built at the beginning of the 1900's and in serious disrepair, but still a popular tourist destination for its stunning vistas and thrilling ride up to the top through a real-live tiger reserve. Fittingly, our rickshaw (yes we took a 3-wheeled covered cart up to the top of a mountain) driver's name was Tiger. We were jamming to Bob Marley the whole way up. We ate another lunch on a cute little roof-top cafe right at the center of the old part of the city called Maxim's Cafe. Great food, even better views. The rest of the afternoon was filled with sight-seeing of the City Palace, Jagdish Temple, more shopping and searching for Sunset Point. Highlights included seeing an elephant in the street and an old tiger-catching cage at the palace. That evening, we ate dinner at this dumpy little family-run restaurant called Sunrise. Great, extremely cheap food, but definitely not for the severe germaphobe. Come to think of it, India is not for the sever germaphobe. We hopped back to our hotel for one last chai, and made our way to the train station where we caught yet another night sleeper train. This time we were a little better prepared for our sleeping conditions.