Udaipur: "Now this is what I came to India for!"
Next - Ranakpur: "You watch the bags; I'm going after the fake priest!"
One of the great things about India is that you never know what wild, exotic, or bizarre experience lurks just around the next corner.
For example, on our first day here in Udaipur we were walking through town on the way to the City Palace, when we heard a bunch of branches shaking in trees overhead, and look-up to discover that there a troop of white monkeys on the move, jumping between trees and buildings just over our heads. They’d sit in a tree, look around, and then in the wink of an eye go flying from branch to branch, then take a big leap of six or 8 feet to another tree, or onto someone’s roof…often with a baby clutched on chest! Though monkeys are common in India and the locals view them with disdain, we thought they put on a great show!
Later in the day was another great random event: An Indian wedding procession that I stumbled upon. An Indian wedding is a big colorful scene and quite a happening. The groom is paraded through town on a white horse. He’s escorted by a brass band, and by what I’ll call a “speaker truck” that blasts shrieking Indian music AT A VERY LOUD VOLUME. Think of the loudest music you’ve ever heard, and multiply it by eleven.
The procession stops periodically, at which point the music is blasted, and the groom’s buddies all wildly dance in the street for a few minutes. Then the recorded music stops, the brass band kicks in and leads the procession a block or so, and the process is repeated. At the rear of the procession were a number of women in colorful saris carrying coconuts and other vegatation on their heads. As none of them spoke English and I didn't know the program, I'm not sure who they were or what the coconuts were all about. As far as I know the bride was nowhere to be seen. I trailed along with the procession for a while, enjoying the spectacle…until I could no longer handle the noise. Note to self: Carry ear-plugs in my day-pack while in India.
Then the next day we were wandering around town, and we heard, then saw, a group of a dozen or so ladies in beautifully colored saris singing outside a shop. We asked someone who they are, and learned that they were villagers who once a year walk something like 90 miles here to town, essentially to get whatever donations they can. Needless to say, as soon as they saw a big white guy (me) they made a beeline for me and broke into their singing and dancing act. So, right there on a dirty Indian street, while cows wandered by, while we dodged poop and avoided the open sewer, we got a very entertaining show. These tribal ladies wear huge gold earrings and/or nose-rings, and have these sort of Indian tambourines and other instruments, making for a very exotic show. We all had a great time with each other, and of course they were very pleased to get my donation to their cause!
Udaipur is a beautiful, magical, romantic place. For the traveler, life revolves around Lake Pichola. The lake is lined with guesthouses and hotels along it’s eastern shore, with rooms ranging in price from $10 to $1000, and out in the lake itself is the famed Lake Palace Hotel. These various buildings are generally beautiful both up close and at a distance, with curved arches and all the touchings of exotic Indian architecture.
At night the scene is just breathtaking: Lights shimmering off the water, and the exotic Lake Palace seeming to rise out of the lake. The Lake Palace hotel featured prominently in the James Bond movie “Octopussy,” so the movie will always be a great reminder of exotic Udaipur.
Udaipur is very much a traveler’s center, and one side of the lake has been completely taken-over with hotels and tourist shops. We clearly remember from past trips that such places were often filled with aggressive touts and hawkers who hung on your elbow with (literally) every step, trying to wear you down into buying something. However, there seems to something of a “don’t hassle the tourists” movement afoot, with the result being few hassles and few attempted rip-offs. It would be a good thing if somehow the movement spread...
We’ve enjoyed the process of getting around town on the 3-wheeled gizmos that are variously referred to as auto-rickshaws, tri-shaws, or tuk-tuks. These are loud and not terribly safe, but highly maneuverable and a true Indian institution. The roads are shared by ladies in saris, often with bricks, baskets, or concrete on their heads; auto-rickshaws; motorbikes; bicycles; cars; cows; donkeys; and some guy even has an elephant that he takes around. All this makes each ride a genuine adventure.
On a previous trip here in 1995 we splurged and stayed at the Shiv Niwas Palace, where we had a suite with something like nine rooms, for $250. These days, though, prices have been driven way up, by the combination of Indian prosperity, and by the arrival of package tourists in larger numbers. Udaipur in particular has become pricey as more celebrities seem to be making a point of coming here. The current example is that the actress Liz Hurley just married an Indian businessman in one of these “wedding-of-the-decade” deals, and they apparently rented-out the entire Lake Palace hotel one night.
We had never been out to the Lake Palace, and I regretted not having made the trip out there when here before. So, this time around we intended to go. Casual visitors are not allowed, but you can go out there for dinner (which we heard wasn’t that great)….but it turned out that the price is now $90 per person! At the risk of sounding cheap, once again we passed.
There are other Palace hotels in town (i.e., former palaces of the Maharajah that have since been converted to hotels), but they were either full or way too expensive for what we’d get. After scouring the town, we ended up at a place called Amet Haveli, and it was a fantastic choice. Our room had a window-seat that looked out over the lake, marble floors, a dozen or so pillars, a great restaurant next door, the whole deal. Though it lacked things like an ornate lobby, or a turbaned guard with a bronze sword, or some of the other trimmings of a palace hotel, we thought it was outstanding, and that it was a great deal for $80. The anchor of our day was to be back at the hotel by 545PM, so that we can get a beer and watch sunset from the roof. Magical!
We have most of our meals at an excellent restaurant beside our hotel, called Ambrai. The view across the lake is phenomenal. A few yards away from the restaurant is a ghat (stairs that go down into the lake) where the locals come each morning to the lake to bathe and do laundry.
Laundry at a ghat should be a spectator sport, because it is fascinating to watch. Women carry-in the dirty clothes in a large basin on their head. They dump out the clothes, scoop some lake water into the basin, add detergent and swish the clothes around a bit. Then they pull out a piece of clothing, lay it on the stone steps, and scrub it with a brush. The they pull out a paddle about two feet long, and just beat the hell out of the garment. In the morning you can hear the “whack, whack, whack” of laundry paddles in action all around the lake. This all provides something of a morning show during breakfast...and also explains the broken buttons on my shirt.
The locals bathing in the lake make for an interesting juxtaposition with the Lake Palace Hotel a hundred yards in the distance. I would guess that most of these particular locals make a few dollars a day, while guests at the Lake Palace are paying $500 a day.
When in India you constantly see how folks are willing to work extremely hard to scratch out a meager living. Women often do the most physical work, with a random example being a couple of women carrying cement to be used in re-surfacing a wall. India….
We have come to love Indian food, and virtually every meal is a highlight. We’ve discovered various new dishes on this trip. Of particular note is Masala Chai, the local brew of tea. The US runs on coffee, and India runs on Masala Chai. We had always been surrounded by it in India – every train station has a few “chai wallahs” walking the platforms and booming “CHAI-eeeeee” at all times. Now that I’ve had it, I’m hooked, and I have a pot each morning. We don’t eat meat in India (a glimpse at the meat section of an Indian market will make just about anyone an instant vegetarian), but the vegetarian dishes are fantastic. In the past I had also avoided any cooked foods that had a milk or cream sauce, but after taking an interesting cooking class (at “The Spice Box,”) we learned that these sauces have to be boiled for quite a while, so we’re assuming they’re safe. Stay tuned…
As for drink: Nobody comes to India for the beer. The national brand is Kingfisher, which I think tastes like lake water. However, the more obscure Cobra beer is great….and has a cool name to boot!
Cheap cotton clothes tend to be a pretty good deal here, and I’ve picked up a few shirts to replace others that have seen a lot of wear over the last 6 weeks we’ve been on the road. At our hotel some laborers are working on adding some new rooms, and as is often the case, most of them are wearing shirts that are in absolute tatters. One guy in particular was showing far more skin than he was covering, given all the holes and rips in his shirt. So, I gave him one of my shirts that I considered to be “worn out,” and he absolutely beamed with excitement as I put it in his hands. He carefully wrapped it up and put it away; my guess is that it may be his new dress-up shirt.
I got a kick out of a small-time hustler, a kid who lives on a side street by the City Palace. I walked by him in the morning, and he said“Mister! I collect coins. Do you have any coins from your country.” I told him no. Then later in the day I walk past him and he hailed me with “Mister! A tourist gave me this coin (one Euro). I cannot use it, can you exchange for Rupees?” I passed, but found his strategy amusing. I’ll call this “India Scam #47B - Bumming coins from one tourist and selling them to another.”
While Udaipur is a magical place, in the interest of full disclosure, it still has it’s unpleasant elements. The warren of tiny streets around the lake are often jammed with traffic; and there are disgusting open sewers along the road which I desperately try to ignore. I walk in front of Michelle scanning the path ahead for unpleasantries, and call out “poop-check” to alert her as needed. Turns out that it’s needed quite a bit…
Beggars here are few in number, but they are still around, and have made for some poignant moments. There’s a guy who perhaps has polio, with tiny shriveled legs. He lays prone on something that resembles a large skateboard, and effectively “paddles on concrete” to get around. I saw him grab onto a trishaw to get a lift. He approached me, and though I don’t tend to give money to beggars, I do give some to folks who appear to have no other way of surviving. I gave him 100 rupees (about $2.20). He kindly thanked me, and asked me to take his picture. I was torn, as perhaps he would have been flattered to have someone take his picture. However, I was mortified at the idea of others seeing a tourist take a picture of a beggar with such a deformity. I declined, and felt terrible about it.
Another instance that will stick in my memory: I was standing on the street taking pictures, and a cute young girl approached, maybe five or six years old. I was vaguely aware of her counting on her fingers: “one, two three, four, five, six.” Thinking she made an error, I decided to help her work on her counting. I squatted down beside her and helped her count her fingers, “one, two, three...” and then I realized that she could count just fine, and that she indeed had six fingers.
Overall, for us the good of Udaipur far outweighs the bad. I thought that an insightful traveler captured it all. We were having our beer at sunset, looking out over the lake, and a backpacker walked up to the edge of the lake and looked around with a wistful smile on his face. “This is it!” he said. “I’ve been in India for two months, dealing with hassles and touts and thieves, trying to find the India I’d heard so much about. Now I’ve found it! This is it!. This is what I came to India for!”
We’ll have spent a total of 7 days here by the time we leave for Ranakpur tomorrow, and we’ve pretty much loved every minute.
March 11, 2007
Bob’s ratings (1= terrible, 5=ok, 10=fantastic):
- Jet Airways (flight from Mumbai to Udaipur): 7
- Udaipur: 9
- Ambrai restaurant: 9
- Amet Haveli hotel: 9
- Poonam Haveli hotel: 7
- Tribal dance show Meera Kala Mandir: 7
- Cooking class at “The Spice Box:” 6
- Jagat Niwas Palace restaurant: 5 (amazing view, lousy food)
Next - Ranakpur: "You watch the bags; I'm going after the fake priest!"