We arrived in Udaipur early morning, where a rickshaw driver called Bilau took us to the Lake view Guest House (300 rps-1 night). He showed us a book of all his achievements of taking tourists around Udaipur where they have left comments in his books. He's got several and it was his pride and joy. Udaipur is labelled as the fairytale city becasue it is surrounded by mountains, with several fairytale palaces towering the city. Some of these palaces have been converted into hotels (5-7 star) The famous attraction of the city is the two palaces in the middle of Lake Pichola. Lake Palace is used as a hotel and the other palace on the other Island is used for weddings, which was built by Shah Jahan, the same guy who built Taj Mahal. Octopussy, one of the James Bond movies was filmed in Udaipur, where they used Lake palace and the monsoon palace in the movie.
On the first day we visited the City Palace, where the current Maharaja of Udaipur lives in a certain section of the palce and the rest is a hotel and a museum. We walked around the museum, which showed what the Maharaja of old did and used. there was a good collection of guns and knives and the rest of it was art (pretty boring for us). We were also advised to go and see the fountains, which was near the other lake (about half hour walk) so when we got there in the evening, it was quite busy with families but it was just a huge garden with some fountains as the centerpiece. Eating at a restaurant in the evening was always on the cards but each restaurant was on the rooftop (4-5 floors) and offered us to watch Octopussy, which they never shut up raving about. We sold our hotel out and went to the one next door because apparantly it had a bigger screen but it never did, it was about the same. Anyway it was weird watching the movie becasue we saw the palaces in the movie but then the actual palace was just behind the TV.
Next morning, we hired a couple of bicycles to cycle to the Monsoon Palace, which is on top of this mountain and about 10 km away from the Lake. This was used in the monsoon season, hence the name, by the Maharajas back in the day. Apparently this palace was successfully taken over once by 3 armies joining forces but only for 2 days and we knew why. The cycle to the bottom of the mountain was pretty straight forward but then a 3km incline to the top in the heat was very hard work. We had to push our one-geared bikes up all the way with me probably losing half of my body weight in sweat but it was worth it for the ride down-good job the breaks worked. There was nothing to see at the palace but the views from the top was what made it worthwile. Danny managed to jam his chain on the way back going too fast over a bump so there were a cluster of locals of trying to help us out but we managed to sort it.
In the evening, we went on a boat ride (1hr-200 rps each) around Lake Pichola seeing all the palaces up close. There were a few tourists on there and a local Indian, who Danny labelled Kanye East with his huge glasses and his very tight jeans. He was trying so hard to woo the ladies, all who seemed quite old so whatever floats your boat ah kid!! We were offered Chai (tea) with these guys after where they told us their secrets on how to pull girls, like we needed any, but Kanye East was so full of himself, he just cracked us up and we needed to kill some time for our next train journey.
Udaipur Photo Link:
No comments:
Post a Comment