Udaipur

As we said  in our last blog,we split the journey up from Jaisalmer to Udaipur in 2 stages as we are too old and too cynical to do a 14 hour sleeper bus in one hit as these buses can be a nightmare in that you don't get any sleep unless you have a big bottle of Diazepam as your best friend or you can get into a fight with one of the locals and if you are lucky they will knock you out and put you to bed. We took the train to Jodhpur which was a 6 hour sleeper affair which was very pleasant for £8 each and then over-nighted at a lovely place which was part of a NGO operation to help outcast women get back on their feet. We then upgraded our bus option to a company called Apex Chaudry who supplied a new luxury A/C bus to take us to Udaipur the following morning.
   Next morning the owner of the hotel offered to take us to the bus station for free but this involved going into the lobby and waking up one of the hotel man servants who slept on the floor and asking them to drive us to our pick up point. So I volunteered to do this deed at 5.30am. I descended into the void of the pitch black lobby and found a body on the floor and started shaking him but he did not stir. So I gave him a gentle slap on the face but still no reaction. It was too dark to find anyone else so I tried again with an over zealous slap around the chops which produced the required results making the boy open his eyes and jump up startled like he had been assaulted in the street, with wide eyes, staring at this balding white man who he had never seen before staring back at him after having slapped him around the chops. To compound the problem he did not speak English and doing hand gestures in the dark to convey my needs was not going well. A few 'broom broom' noises followed and he understood  the word bus and we were good to go. When Kathy and I boarded the minibus with him to go to the bus station I was unsure if I had slapped him hard enough as his driving was so horrendous that he was either still asleep or clearly he had never driven before.

" I'm gonna jump unless you tell me name mister"

   The 5 hour bus journey started out fairly well, and we even had a chai tea and toilet break halfway. But after that, as with most Indian bus journeys the bodies starting piling in by sitting in the aisle and the stereo was cranked up with the standard wailing falsetto singing and the twanging background accompaniment which at first is quite likable but after track 14 (which was identical to track 1-13) it soon starts to grate the nerves which when added to the Lewis Hamilton's driving schools latest student who is navigating the bus to Udaipur (who every 5 minutes would slide the side window open, take a raspy snort, and propel a loaded greeney from the back of his throat into the oncoming traffic) you become a bit nauseous. Well what do you expect for £6 each!
  After 5 hours we arrived in the blistering mid-day heat of Udaipur and ran the usual gauntlet of rip-off rickshaw drivers who we dispatched with remarkable ease and found a pensioner with minimal teeth to take us to our hotel for an agreeable fee. The hotel was stunning, over looking the palace from the balcony but our room as beautiful as it was presented  was too noisy being next to the road so we negotiated an upgrade for a discounted price at the back of the hotel and we settled in. We went out later for unremarkable food in a local restaurant  that was apart from the fact we were the only customers in there, was most quirky. After we had ordered and drinks  had been presented, the owner came over to our table and asked us to move. We were a little perplexed as there were no other people present and we liked where we were based. We inquired why we had to move as we were happy next to the fan and comfortable. He explained to us that he needed our table to stand upon so he could carry out his Pooja ( a type of blessing/prayer) to the small Ganesh temple which he had built in a small alcove in the ceiling above our table. So not wanting to stand in the way of religion, we two atheist upped sticks and sat at an adjoining table while he stood on the table with his dirty, smelly bare feet and lit joss sticks and mumbled/hummed a few glad tidings to the God Ganesh while we watched on while waiting for our dinner. The food arrived, he finished off, got down, did not wipe the table (lucky escape there!) and life continued as normal. Only in India!!!!!!

The locals like to dress up for the disco on a Saturday night.

   After a night time stroll around the city lakeside and ghats, we scored some fresh popcorn from a roadside vendor and retired back to the room. Next day Kathy's nose issue flared up due to the constant presence of excessive pollution in the streets outside so we decided it was not wise for her to pursue sight seeing today and rest. That gave me artistic licence to explore Udaipur on my own, so after I had attended to the patient with a pharmacy run and returning with most of Glaxo, I hit the mean streets. I happily ambled around, crossing the lake and taking some snaps, looking up small alleys, talking to over helpful Indians, telling 462 Indians what my name was and what country I was from, then bagging some masala dosa's and returning for lunch with the patient. After lunch I found a beer shop, purchased a few cold ones and headed up to a sunset view point over the lake near to the magical musical fountain for some good views. Monkeys were everywhere keeping me entertained as I sat there waiting for the sun to set along with the other 678 Indians who asked me what my name was and what country I was from. Saying I was England was not getting a very favourable response so I changed my name to what ever I found amusing and told everybody I was from Iceland which seemed to get a far better nod of approval.

Some of the locals were non too friendly.

 Kathy was still not too good next day again and was ordered to stay in, so I went up to the palace and had a mooch around taking in all the sights which were above average to be fair but crowded.  I went about handing over my money by being the good tourist I was, whenever I wanted to enter anywhere with a door or gate. After lunch I took a rickshaw to the other larger lake called Fateh Sagar where I took a boat tour of the lake which had a nice central park like island at the cost of  only £1 which was nice apart from I was the only foreigner on the boat and the 27 Indians asking me what my name was and where I was from.
 I then disembarked and walked up a nice view point opposite the lake which had a lot of war stuff going on and a museum about past Indian war triumphs. The views were impressive so I stuck around people watching and admiring the setting sun while attending to the 322 Indians who found out my name was Tarquin and I was from Outer Mongolia.

It was nice to see the Indians keeping the memory of Freddy Mercury alive.

 Next day Kathy had made no improvement so it was another run to the pharmacy to boost Glaxo's profits. This time the owner invited me in and we had a chinwag about stuff as clearly he was intrigued about my bulk buying of antibiotics which ended with him finding out my name was Cuthbert and I was from Sierra Leone. After lunch with Kathy, I took the cable car up the side of a mountain to a shabby Hindu temple where people were dressing up and taking silly snaps of each other which I got roped into and put one of the silly snaps on Facebook of me dressed as a local. Best bit was I got mistaken for an Indian at the ticket counter and paid local prices so it was worth keeping the tan topped up and wearing 80's styled sunglasses. I also went to see the magical music fountain which was a (in their words)  light and sound extravaganza . After paying my park entry fee I later found out in great Indian style that it wasn't working so walked around the park, sat and watched monkeys play fighting on the lawn, watched numerous teenage couples consuming each other in the bushes and telling 47 Indian enquirers my name was Jesus and I was from Nazareth.

We had to cancel our first hotel due to flooding issues.

  Next day we did not fancy the 14 hour train journey back to Delhi so booked a flight from Udaipur airport back which was only 1.5hrs. It also turned out the same price as a train so it seemed we missed a trick there with our travel planning. Back in Delhi we booked an overnight transit hotel which was crap where they tried to overcharge us, the room was a Bates Hotel special, there was a particularly smarmy guy on reception and it was in an area which could only be described as a populated bombsite.It reminded us just how awful Delhi actually was. The pollution was so thick it swilled around us like a thick choking soup as we walked down the road for dinner. Next morning we ordered a taxi for 6.15am on our OLA app on the phone to get us the short distance to the airport which remarkably did turn up and charged us 1/3 the fare the hotel quoted us. As you can not take rupees out of India we off loaded the rest of our money in the airport with a slap up breakfast and a raid on the duty free shop to load up on Smirnoff for the next destination Phuket, Thailand.  Bit disappointed on my last day though as the taxi driver only asked me where I was from and never asked my name so he never found out he had been carrying Phatkok from Narnia.

All these passengers on this boat knew me as Rodney from Peckham.