India - Udaipur & Jodhpur

After Jaipur came the much quieter and much more beautiful Udaipur. We were recommended somewhere to stay by our previous hotel owner (as always) and when we arrived we could tell immediately that even the reception hall was out of our budget. Luckily for us apart from one Canadian guy the hotel was completely empty and we were able to stay for a fraction of the price that the lovely ‘Baba’ was asking…once again thank you low season! Having stuck to our guns and bargained hard for the room we then continued to splash out on a few extravagant items/experiences!

Mike invested in a suit (or two!), we took a boat ride to the island where James Bonds ‘Octopussy’ was filmed, we had a city tour, ate dinner at a gorgeous lakeside restaurant indulging in the first cocktails of our trip and had some Indian cooking classes! I think Baba was probably reasonably surprised just how far the stringent budget he’d heard about on our arrival was managing to stretch…but then you’d be surprised how many times you can ‘make up for not going inside the Taj Mahal!’

Cooking class

We also took a guided tour around the very grand City Palace which was interesting for several reasons, one being that for the majority of the guests we were the main attraction! Mike and I felt like a celebrity couple, literally everywhere we went we had families coming up and asking to have their photos taken with us. Apparently according to our delighted guide the low season for westerners is the high season for Indian tourists who head north to escape the insane heat of the south. He reckoned that many of the tourists were from remote villages and may have never seen a white person in the flesh before…a somewhat alien concept for Mike and I coming from cities like London and Birmingham!

Katy and some Indian Tourists....

Katy and some more Indian Tourists!

Photo taking has become somewhat of a theme throughout India, as has the staring. It’s quite nice when a young family ask if their shy little daughter can have a photo with a westerner. It’s not so nice when a group of leery teenage boys/men ask for a photo, or more often than not just take one on their camera phone without asking and usually with the least subtlety. Since learning that most men use the photos as ‘evidence’ of the white girlfriend they spent the summer with, we’ve changed our attitude towards this particular type of punter.  Mike is still very happy to oblige with ‘a photo of a westerner’…I am not.

I think it was probably Udaipur where we first really got into eating street food, and we did so at least twice a day. The little street food stalls, usually covered in flies, served up delicious freshly cooked samosas and Pakoras. Very yummy, very cheap but very deep fried!!

Small haircut for Mike

Transporting goats Indian Style

Desert Lake

James Bond 'Octopussy' Hotel

After a lovely five days in Udaipur it was time to move on. The destination was Jodhpur and the mode of transport was a sleeper bus! When we first arrived in India it took a while to work out which side of the road they drive, because it doesn’t seem to matter…they drive on whichever side has the least traffic. In fact as I’m writing this now the bus we’re on has just spotted a gap in the central reservation and crossed over into the oncoming traffic of a very busy dual carriageway.  Fair enough I guess…how else do you overtake two parallel trucks taking up your available lanes? Luckily for us the driver of the massive truck hurtling towards us in the opposite direction was paying attention and so able to swiftly move over into his left hand lane. Unfortunately the motorbike to his left was not so lucky and was forced off the road… no harm done though, so all in all a successful maneuver. Absolutely ridiculous and yet apparently completely normal!

The journey to Jodhpur was no exception. Our driver drove like an absolute maniac speeding round corners and over bumps. Mike and I in our bunks at the back of the bus were tossed right to left all night and at one particularly large pothole were propelled 5 inches completely clear of our beds! Sitting up wasn’t an option as we would both have come down with serious concussion so we had to settle with lying down and gripping on to the bars for dear life…as well as our bags for fear of theft. Consequently we arrived in Jodhpur absolutely exhausted and allowed ourselves to driven to the nearest (and cheapest) hotel.

The bluish city of Jodhpur

Jodhpur ‘the blue city’ is not so dissimilar from Jaipur ‘the pink city’. It has the same hustle and bustle feeling that accompanies busy street markets and the same incessant blasting of motorbike and tuk-tuk horns that seem to encompass the whole of India. The little windy streets (often blocked with cows) lead up to a grand fortress which offers great views of the city. To be honest though the highlights for us and not surprisingly for those of you who know Mike (!) were as the Indians would say, ‘the eatables’. 

We found a place that served great Thali, a meal that consists of 3-5 chapatti, poppadom, 3 types of curry, curd, pickle and rice - basically large quantities of food for very little money. There was also an amazing lassi shop and some really yummy Indian sweet shops. Despite warnings of local water often being used in them, our love of lassis has steadily grown throughout India. In fact we’ve even started to recall places we’ve been by the lassis we’ve had! No dodgy stomachs yet!!

Next Stop Jaisalmer....      

Panni Puri

Lentils

Indian Sweets