After a 15-hour overnight bus ride from the deserts of Jaisalmer we arrived in the lake city of Udaipur early last Monday morning. The journey - our 1st on India's sleeper buses was interesting and about half-way into the trip the coach suffered a blow-out to a rear tyre. A team of Indian's quickly assembled and we were on our way again quickly.
When we arrived at 5.30am we were greeted by a horde of tuk-tuk drivers hungry for tourist rupee, after a quick bit of bargaining, we managed to get a lift to our hotel - where we promptly crashed out for four hours.
The sleeper bus is a good idea but someone really ought to change the name. We grabbed a couple of hours but it's not exactly comfortable - more later.
So, first impressions of Udaipur - well it was very touristy. Whether this was because of Diwali or not I'll never know, but the touts and hawkers that had bugged us in Jaisalmer were out in full force here trying to sell us everything from marble statues of elephant-headed god Ganesha (we bought two), to Hashish (we steered well clear).
On our first walk into town we were stopped by a bookshop owner who was also a fashion designer, an artist who was apparently soon due to exhibit in Tate Modern (but after showing us his 'art school' surprisingly tried to sell us a few paintings), and all manner of other people.
The lake palace was impressive, but unfortunately due to a bad monsoon the lake was virtually empty and covered in green algae - which didn't seem to stop people washing their clothes in it.
The palace is of course one of the central locations for James Bond 'Octopussy', and this is used to draw in tourists. I felt though that the mountains around Udaipur were a lot more impressive and were excellent places to watch the sunset and perfect my amateur snapper skills - or at least try!
As Diwali drew closer the explosions grew louder. At times I can imagine Udaipur sounded like Baghdad circa 2003. The Indians seem to have a much more laid back approach to health and safety than us Brits.
Children throw fireworks and firecrackers in the streets, they throw them at tuk-tuks they threw them in the lake, they launched them at hotels - and boy do they know know to put on a show.
At about 9pm on our second evening (Diwali night) we were sat in the roof-top restaurant of the 'Dream Heaven' guesthouse and it just kicked off. Everywhere you looked fireworks were being launched. And unlike a UK fireworks display that might last half-hour if you're lucky, this went on all night and the fireworks just seemed to get bigger and better. It was truly impressive and we both felt privileged to be in such a beautiful city for what is the Indians' biggest festival.
The next day we both decided to visit the Monsoon Palace. This sits on a huge mountain overlooking the city. On the way there we saw our first elephant, who was in the road (surprise, surprise) and was being decorated for the celebrations. The drive to the the palace almost destroyed the tuk-tuk - I don't think its four-stroke engine and three wheels were designed for hill cimbing, but the views once we arrived were fantastic.
Things got even better when Angela spotted a black-faced monkey (not the scientific name), and I rushed down to get a few pictures of it before it ran off. As I was taking pictures of it, more and more people seemed to join in.
This seemed fine until I leant down to get a shot from knee-height. Suddenly, the passive 'cute' monkey, that moments earlier had been cleaning its balls and seemed oblivious to my camera, bared its BROWN FANGS and leapt at me!
I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared. It wasn't big, probably sitting no more than three-feet high, but it was quick and it had brown fangs - dark brown, like the plague. I ran. Having decided to give the rabies jabs a miss it was one disease I could do without. Luckily I don't think it bit anyone, and it wasn't joined by any of its fellow monkeys - which really could have turned things ugly.
The next day fearing reprisals from the primates we both decided it was time to hot-foot it out of Udaipur. Unfortunately this was to prove harder than expected. Due to Diwali Indians were travelling all over the country visiting friends and family, all the trains were booked and bus and coach prices had tripled.
We cancelled our planned visit to Bundi in southern Rajasthan and decided to make our way to Mumbai (which I'm going to call Bombay from now on as it's a better name), from there the plan was to head by ferry for Maharashtra's Konkan coastline. It sounded so easy. Another 15-hour bus ride, a short hop in a taxi through Bombay to the Gateway of India port and a ferry to the coast. How wrong we were. (continued in next post...)
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