Udaipur

Date arrived: 6th November 2023

Date Departed: 13th November 2023

Favourite sight: The City Palace - it's just incredible

Average Cost: £38.07 PPPD (Heading in the right direction)

6th November

It was a fairly long train ride from Ahmedabad to Udaipur, at 6 hours, and we arrived at Udaipur's busy city station after dark. With no luck from Uber, we managed to find a rickshaw to take us into town to our accommodation, and agreed a price based on what our hotel had told us. So far so good!

As we sped along the narrow streets through the city, we could see a thriving commercial district, but had no real sight of any of the promised monuments or lakes. The streets got narrower as we continued through, until we eventually reached an alley-way little wider than the rickshaw. We had arrived at our hotel.

We checked in and were shown to our room, which was, on the surface, okay looking. The LalGhat guesthouse we were staying in fronts right on to Lake Pichola, the man made lake at the centre of Udaipur city. We had chosen it for it's proximity to the heart of the old town, and the lake-side view. It's also the oldest guesthose in the city. The lake view from the room was superb, but it was also apparent that the place had not modernised extensively. Okay, the room was a lot better than the FabHotel, Ahmedabad - but it was certainly no Radisson. And it was not particularly clean, which is always off putting. 

We went to the rooftop restaurant for some dinner, as we were quite tired and couldn't quite face the city as yet. From here, the views were even more spectacular.

We did have one fairly concerning moment when we returned to our room, finding a couple of rather large ants crawling across the bedroom floor. On closer inspection we spotted literally hundreds of the things crawling around the wall on the lake side of the room. I popped down to reception to ask if they had any thing to help with them, and about ten minutes later, a chap turned up and appeared to draw some chalk lines on the floor around where the wriggle critters were gathered (although they had reduced in number by now - possibly because the lights were on!)

Anyway - you can see in the picture above that our bags were hanging on hooks, and there was good reason for that. 

After a long day's travel, we retired nervously to bed, hoping that the ants would stay behind their chalk line!

7th November

Okay - we have to give it to Indian pest control. The "chalk" was effective. We woke this morning to a literal ant graveyard, with hundreds of the little buggers' corpses littering the floor of the room. Clearly whatever is in the chalk might not stop the ants from crossing it, but it has a severely detrimental efffect on their health! Cue 20 minutes of sweeping up dead ants using ripped off pieces of cardboard.

Anyway - ant corpses disposed of, we ate a swift breakfast at the hotel's rooftop restaurant - okay but not great - and set out to explore Udaipur's premier attraction - the City Palace. Originally built in the 16th century when Maharana* Udai Singh II sought to build a new capital city for the Mewar region, the palace has gradually expanded over the centuries as subsequent Maharanas have added to it. The complex now stretches for over 600M along the side of Lake Pichola, and incorporates 11 separate palaces, as well as numerous other buildings.

*What's the difference between a Maharana and a Maharaja? We were curious as well, but it turns out that they are the same, however Udaipur decided randomly that their Maharaja should be called a Maharana instead. Simples, I guess.

Let's just say that the City Palace museum is seriously impressive. From the initial collection of arms and armour, the exhibits run through various parts of the palace, visiting galleries and courtyards, travelling up and down staircases, and demonstrating some of the lavish quarters that a Mahara(j/n)a might build for themselves and their family. Here are a small selection of the (literally) hundreds of piccies I snapped in the 4 hours we spent in the palace.

We had a simple thali lunch inside the palace, before exploring the models exhibition, which tracked the development of the palace over the centuries through a number of scale models. This was right up my street. We also visited a maps exhibit, which showed the history and significance of map making in Rajasthan, from historical Mewar "3d" style maps and drawings to the precise cartographic efforts of the British Empire.

We strolled beyond the palace and spotted the various boat docks to visit the islands in the lake, then wandered back through the city to our hotel, before visiting a slightly more upmarket hotel for dinner. All-in-all, this was an excellent day, and Udaipur City Palace is right up there as a site to visit.

8th November

Today, we decided to brave the minefield of buying an Indian phone. We'd come across a few scenarios where not having an Indian phone number had caused challenges, and also realised that having a cheap smartphone to use for simple navigation, Uber etc might be safer than flashing our expensive Samsung/i-things everywhere we went. It also meant we could just set up a hot-spot from this phone, using a cheap Indian data tarrif, and connect our other devices to it as required. We identified two Indian networks with retail stores in Udaipur, and made our way through the city to the first of these.

Udaipur's old city was quite similar to Ahemedabad's in some way, although there were more cows and dogs, and a much greater variety of older tuk-tuks and mopeds. We later learned that Ahmedabad had banned older 2-stroke petrol tuk-tuks back in 2005, moving them from the 4th to the 66th most polluted city in India in just 3 years. This was not the case in Udaipur, which was apparent as we wandered the streets. We did see a small number of electric tuk-tuks however - I'm surprised Musk hasn't got in on that game yet.

As we wandered through the narrow streets, we spotted a man sat at a sewing machine, in a small storefront. As an aside, all of the store fronts in India are small - and similar stores seem to collect together in areas, so this chap was perched in the midst of several hundred clothing and fabric shops, but he was the first alteration/repair man we'd seen. I took the opportunity to try and get my damaged bag repaired, which was very successful. The repair, including a new catch, cost a mighty 70 rupees  - about 70 pence!

We made it to the Vi shop, where it turned out they didn't sell phones. Fortunately the shop next door did (this grouping of businesses together is useful) and was able to supply us with an Indian made Poco C50 smartphone. It had a big 6.5" screen, 4G signal, and a  finger print sensor, and cost us just over £65. 

Next stop - back to the SIM card shop.  We could not get a post-pay (contract) SIM as non-Indians, but we could get a pre-pay one, and it was going to cost us all of 299 rupees (3 pounds) for a SIM with 1.5GB of data per-day and a month's validity. As 20GB of data on our Airalo global e-SIMs cost $60, simple maths showed that we could buy a phone and get 4 months of data for... a lot less... than we would pay to re-charge the Airalos!

Whilst out and about, we also visited the Maharana's vintage car collection, a small museum based in the old palace garage, not far from the phone shop. Whilst small - about 20 cars - the museum was well put together, and one of the staff talked us through each car individually, telling us some of it's history and why it was in the collection. The collection  included a '20s Rolls Royce converted into a safari truck, a beautiful RR Phantom - used in the Bond film, Octopussy - and even a couple of '60s Chevys, incuding one used to transport Queen Elizabeth when she visited. We enjoyed the hour or so we spent here quite a lot!

9th November

Today we took a day-trip to the (not-so) nearby city of Chittorgargh. India is famous for it's forts, and Chittorgargh is one of the most impressive. Or was. Like a few of these magnificent castles in Rajasthan, Chittorgargh sits atop a rock ridge, in this case some 100M or so above the plain, and the walled fortress is 6KM long and 3KM wide! Over the centuries much of it has fallen to ruin, however, quite a lot remains, and some in excellent condition.

We had an early start, with a 7.50AM train speeding us the 115KM to Chittorhargh in about 90 minutes. This was one of India's newer trains, the Vandhe-Bharat express, and as such comprised only Chair Class accommodation instead of the more traditional sleeper trains. This is basically what we would recognised as a normal train, although because India has adopted the 5'6" guage for it's railways, the carriages are a LOT wider than th UK. This means the seats are split into 3 on one side and 2 on the other, but are still sider and have significantly more legroom than on UK trains, even 1st class.

We also got an unexpected (but much appreciated) breakfast on the train, as well as a copy of the Times of India to read :-) This didn't stop us getting a 'proper' breakfast when we got to Chittorgarch, before flagging a tuk-tuk to take us up to the fort.

Okay - Chittorgargh is vast. We walked around up there for 6 hours and barely covered a third of it, but we did see some amazing temples, monuments, step wells, and towers. We picked up a printed English language guide book for 50p, and learned quite a bit as we went round as well. It turns out the story of Chittorgargh is rather tragic, and steeped in Indian tradition. On three separate occasions, the warriors of the fort have either been overrun by attacking enemies, or set out on a last chance suicide charge and been wiped out to the last man. In the times of the Raj, and as late as the latter half of the 19th Centrury, it was traditional for an Indian widow to burn herself alive on her husband's funeral pyre. Not a nice thought - but we did learn that they would consume quite a lot of Opium as part of this process. This tradition is known as Sati.

In the case of a besieged city, should the defending warriors not prevail, it is well understood that their families would likely be ill-used by the victorious forces. This is why, on the three occasions mentioned above, the women and children of Chittorgargh committed mass suicide - in their thousands - burning themselves alive rather than face the merciless wrath of the invading forces. 

Thus it was that after the third time of Chittorgargh being overrun, then surviving leader of the Mewar people went on to build a new capital - Udaipur - thus the importance of Chittorgargh in the history of the City by the Lakes.

Lots of intricate carvings and sandstone buildings, including the incredible 37M tall Victory tower - built to celebrate a victory,but nobody can quite figure out which one!

10th November

This was the first day of the Diwali festival, and we had a fairly relaxed day exploring some of the city around the lake and our hotel. We didn't stray far, but did have a bit of a traipse trying to find a cash machine that would let us take out any money!

One thing we have found in India is that whilst there is a robust banking sector, much of it is closed to non-Indians. One of the worlds largest ever IT projects, the Universal Payment Interface (UPI) allows Indians to payone another very easily using simple QR codes and smartphone apps, or even mobile numbers and text messages, and this is all tightly integrated into bank accounts and mobile networks. Unfortunately, it is locked down to Indian payment cards and bank accounts, meaning we've been working with cash for pretty much every transaction on this trip!

We managed to find a nice restaurant across Lake Pichola from our hotel, where we had a pretty nice lunch. We also went to a nearby resturant for dinner - Charcoal, by Carlsson - which proved excellent. In fact we liked it so much that we asked them if we could join them for the main Diwali Festival on Sunday 12th. They said yes, so it was good to have something booked in for this one!

11th November

Today we decided to head out of town again, and visit the Monsoon Palace, or Sajjangarh to give it it's full name. Originally envisaged as an observatory for watching cloud movements during the monsoon, the palace sits high atop one of the hills overlooking the lake and is visible for miles around. The trip involved a tuk-tuk ride out to the entrance of the Sajjangarh wildlife park, which surrounds the palace. From there it's necessary to take a shared taxi up the winding 4KM road to the palace itself.

It's a pretty cool place, with magificnt views over the lakes and city of Udaipur. You can definitely see the structure of the city better from up here, although atmospheric pollution was visibly bad today. The palace was used as the setting for the villain's home in the Bond movie Octopussy, and indeed Bond even landed in the main courtyard in a Union Jack hot air ballon in the final action sequence!

There is a small cafe facility there, which somebody has amusing named the Chunda Palace; ironically it only serves western style fast food and no curries at, but that didn't stop the name being funny! Sometimes childish humour is the best.

On our return to town we had lunch at a small rooftop restaurant where Julie was able to facetime with her folks, allowing us to show them the view over the lake. 

12th November

Our last full day in Udaipur, and also the main day of the Diwali festival. We spent today travelling to Jagmandir Island, one of the two islands in Lake Pichola. This one is publically accessible by a (fairly expensive) ferry, which also takes you for a loop round the lake on your way.

The Island is small, and half of it is given over to a palace complex, which is now a fancy hotel and restaurant. We managed a cup of coffee there :-) The remainder is beautifully laid out as a garden, and we spend a very pleasant hour wandering theat, before taking the boat back to the mainland.

We mad a brief detour to the Jadgish Temple at the centre of the old town, where we were shown some of the temple paintings as well as having an opportunity to look round the building itself. 

As the day continued, we could see Diwali preparations ramping up, and hear bangers and firecrackers going off more and more. At around 8PM we went back up to th Charcoal restaurant, where we were welcomed like old friends and shown to a reserved table with a good view over the lake. The next three hours were quite exciting really, with fireworks going off everywhere, firecrackers galore from the alley beneath us, some really good food, and perhaps a few bottles of Kingfisher Strong beer! I've attached a few pics below, but it's difficult really to quite capture the spirit of a really quite fun night :-)

13th November

On our last day in Udaipur, we had an early train (07:50 - yeuch) which necessitated an early alarm, and grabbing a tuk-tuk to get to the station. The drive felt a little subdued - and then we realised that wed heard no horns in the 15 minute trip! We didn't really figure this out, whether it was a Diwali thing, or just a "too early" thing, but it was intriguingly different.

This was the same fast train as we'd caught to Chittorgargh early in the week, so we didn't try to get food beforehand, knowing that we would be fed on the train - which we were! It was a pretty smooth trip for a 4 1/2 hour train journey. The train brought us to Ajmer, about 10KM away from our destination of Pushkar, so we had to negoriate for a tuk-tuk for this last leg.