Udaipur, Rajasthan, India (By Kev)

2.4.2025. Packing, yay! Coming up with a plan on how to spend our day with all our bags , until we hop on our bus at 6 tonight. We'll see what we come up with.
We had lunch at our now favourite restaurant in Mumbai (not spicy!). Then we went back to the board game café (pair of dice cafe on Google, board and bistro on the front) and spent a couple more hours there before having trouble getting a taxi. We cut it close to our bus departure time, and there is nothing clearly marked as to where our pick-up area was. Thankfully, as with everywhere we've been, there's been a helpful local to point us in the right direction. My impression of the locals has changed a bit. Yes they're pushy, they're just trying to get work. They're still loud, but living here with all the noise, cars, motorbikes, Tuktuk's and horns, they have to be, and I guess it's hard to go back to a form of quiet. The bloody horns!! Some people just hold em on for ages. I get it, your horn works, now give it a rest. Anyway, back to our bus. We found it with some help. Saw the company name on the back of a bus so headed there. When we got there I heard a guy say “hold the bus”, hold the bus? We're 15mins early. Bags in, hopped on and the bus was off. Was much like the night bus in Cambodia, but with a little more room. We found out tho that, unlike Cambodia, the road is a bit more shit and I'm pretty sure the bus's rear shocks were gone. Felt like we were in a boat not a bus. About 8, the kids decided it was time for sleep, about 8:10 I was helping Emma down so she could spew, poor kid. Hopped back into bed and was out.
3.4.2025. Managed to sleep a fair bit of the night, woke up stuff and sore tho. Em had been up a bit and was now back to sleep, had another spew just before we got off, poor kid. Tuktuk to our guesthouse in Udaipur, can't check in yet but we can leave our bags there. We walked down towards the lake and found a restaurant for smoko. Had a bit of a look around until it was time to check in. After checking in, we headed for the palace. First thing you see coming in is two huge elephant sculptures. We started our visit, plenty to look at. Paintings, sculptures and just the walls. Plenty of walls painted and decorated. Lots of old weapons on display. Plenty of stained glass and windows to look out of. We thought there would be a light show at the palace later in the evening, that's what google said, but not anymore. They keep the palace open longer and have stopped the light show. Luckily in our earlier walkings we stumbled across a small place close to the palace that does a puppet and dance show. That'll do, we bought tickets earlier in day. After the palace we visited a couple temples very close by. The Jagdish temple was very impressive with all the carvings and singing from inside. After that we went back to our room and showered up, the kids were smelly. Headed out for the show, as always not knowing what to expect. On our way we heard music, we remembered talking to the “priest” of Jagdish temple earlier, he said there was a festival on and it finished today. There was music and women dancing in brightly coloured dresses. Some had big things on their heads and were dancing, lots of people out the front of the temple. We started wishing we hadn't book a show tonight and could stay here. But oh well, off to the show. They started the show with a traditional Rajasthani welcome song, then onto a puppet show. I haven't seen a lot of puppet shows, but this was pretty good. We moved onto some traditional dancing, was very impressive. Lots of spinning, some balancing of pots on heads while dancing and spinning. Then just to make it a bit harder, and more impressive, they danced with pots on their head while balancing on some small pots, and a plate, and then walked on some glass. Pretty straightforward sorta stuff, dunno why we had to pay to see something so pedestrian, honestly! All of a sudden it was over, 1 hour had flown by. Only it wasn't quite the end, everyone was invited up to dance with the performers. The lady we bought the tickets off(owner maybe) came up to us and reminded us of a promise she made when we bought the tickets, to show the kids how the puppets worked. Sure enough, they came back out with two of the puppets used in the show and taught the kids a little bit of how to use them. They both listened well and learnt what they were shown and were able to control the puppets pretty well. Now Andrew wants a puppet when we get back, we'll see. Afterwards we went to find some food. Stopped at a little place overlooking the street, looked really nice. Oh yeah we're on the street in Udaipur, India. The horns! It was still a nice view, the food was only ok tho. Too hot for the kids, mine was almost too hot for me and Mel stole my dessert. Headed back to the room and slept better than the previous night, at least my bed was still.
4.4.2025. We went for a walk today, Mel found a walking tour of Udaipur online which looked easy enough. Already had a couple spots ticked off from the day before. Stopped near the palace for some brekky, and continued on. You get to take in more of the city when you walk. In a Tuktuk, of which we were offered a lot of rides in, you go past too fast, you miss things. I'm sure we still miss stuff while walking, but less I think, and I like it. You see buildings from different angles, you see more shops and what's in them, you see more of the people. You engage with people, whether you want to or not. We've had people genuinely interested in talking to us and fascinated with what we are doing, some people just want a picture, and some seem interested but just want to sell you something. I'm getting better at dealing with all of it. Mel is loving Udaipur, they're a photographer at heart and are in their element here. There's a lot going on here, with palace's and lake views and old buildings. Not to mention the temple festival last night, Mel is loving it. We kinda wish we had more time here, but we'll fit in what we can. We'll probably say that about the next place too, and the next and so on and so forth. In the end 1 year won't be enough I'm sure. In the afternoon we visited Bagore ki Haveli, another palace on the lake, turned into a museum also. There were paintings and sculptures, some exhibits on how day to day life was and a turban museum. We headed back to our room for some rest and to refresh a bit before heading back to Bagore ki Haveli again in the evening for another dance show. The show was similar to the previous nights, but held in a courtyard inside the palace. While the palace created a nice venue for a performance, we felt it wasn't as memorable of a performance as last night's. There was also a small one man puppet show, which seemed to be a token effort, and was not nearly as good as the previous nights. We enjoyed the show, got some dinner after at a restaurant I found and headed back.
5.4.2025. Today we had organised a music lesson for the kids. Andrew had a lesson with hand drums, Emma had a lesson afterwards with the Sitar. They both enjoyed the lesson and I think were happy to be doing some music. After that we had a trip to the Sajjangarh Monsoon Palace, built at the top of a nearby mountain. You can see it in the distance from Udaipur. Once at the top you get a great view of all around the area. It was used as a royal residence during the monsoon season, hence the name. Apparently it's lovely and green at that time, not while we're here unfortunately. There is a small museum inside with a display on local animals and a area dedicated to birds of prey. After that we visited Tiger lake, one of three lakes of the area. Then onto the princess gardens. A large garden area in Udaipur with a small painting gallery. Outside was fountains with elephant sculptures and lots of squirrels. The kids, especially Andrew, love squirrels. We got the driver to drop us near the palace and we went up to a rooftop restaurant and had a cold beer, was lovely after a long hot day. We then bought some tickets for a sunset boat ride, turned out pretty good. Had a chat with some other tourists and watched a nice sunset over the hills next to yet more palace's. Back to the restaurant after for another beer, dinner and watch a little IPL on the tv. Day done.
6.4.2025. We had a taxi organised through the homestay to take us to a temple and Kumbhalgarh Fort. A massive fort way up in some hills, 2 hour taxi ride from here. We're off, we're stopped. Driver pulled into the servo, thinking that would have been taken care of before picking us up but hey, it's India! We're off again, heading towards the temple. We arrived at Ranakpur Temple. Bought our tickets and visited. A massive Jain temple, look up the Jain religion if you're interested, I'm not going into detail. What I can say is they're strict vegetarians who believe in reincarnation. Holy moly, talk about carvings. The temple is spectacular. Apparently 1442 carved pillars holding up, let's say, lots of domes. Everything is white marble, carved by 2785 workers, and took 50 years during the 15th century. There is a tree there that is over 500 years old, a Rayan tree, and every Jain temple has one of these trees. Everything in this temple was carved, and no two pillars were the same. It was truly one of the most spectacular pieces of artwork I have seen so far. Anyway, we'd had our fill of carved marble and were off again, this time heading towards the fort. The fort is impressive, built up on a rock mountain, with a wall that starts and finishes at it. The wall is 36klm long, and is the second longest wall in the world, behind the great wall of China(which is over 21,000klm, so, ya know, close second). Anyway, tickets to buy, forts to visit. If you ever come to India there is something you will notice when buying tickets to see anything. They have an Indian price, and a tourist price. We have dealt with it for 5 weeks so far and it's starting to get to us, just a little bit. For the locals to enter, Rs40 is all you need. For us Rs600, and it's been like that everywhere. As I said, it's starting to get to us a bit. We're seeing the same bloody thing, plus we had to pay for our Visa's just to be in the country, oh and plane tickets. We felt like walking wallets in SE Asia, but I feel it's worse here. We still pay, obviously, not coming all this way to not see anything. Just getting a little pissed off with how unfair it seems. At home everyone pays the same price, standardised pricing, we all get ripped off, as it should be. No bloody extra cost just cause you came from further, if anything it should be cheaper. I won't make tourism Minister I'm sure. Oh right, the fort! Big, way up a hill, and a great view from the top. We could see where a bit of the wall went, over hills and around other stuff. We later tried to walk a bit of the wall, only to find most of it closed off, disappointing. We stayed for a sound and light show that kicked off at 7:30. We found what we thought were some good seats to watch the lights on the fort, everyone else sat the other side of a temple there. Hardly even used the fort for the light show, which seemed a huge mistake to me. At least we all payed the same price for the light show, oh right, nevermind. We sat through a kinda lame light show with a story in Hindi, because we thought at the end they would light up the whole fort, and Mel really wanted a picture of that. Nope, never did that, they kinda just turned most the lights off and we needed the light from our phones to help guide us back down. Disappointed, we walked back and found our taxi driver, vowing, no more light shows in India. Long ride back, early start tomorrow. Off to another destination for more adventures.
KevRead more