We Love Udaipur!

I think this is our best visit yet; Udaipur is very beautiful and green, with two large lakes (both human-created centuries ago). We started our day today by sleeping in until our 8:00 AM wakeup call (and yes, that's late for us. Really!). We went to the amazing palace right on the larger lake, and it was so wonderful. It's huge but friendly, with many courtyards, palm trees, formal and informal gardens, flowering plants and bushes everywhere, great art, funny signs, and truly stunning views out over the lake. I think it's safe to say we all really enjoyed it. This palace was different from some of the other palaces we have seen (most of which feel more like forts than palaces). Plus this one has not only the Maharajah living there, but his daughter and unmarried son the prince (let's just say there were more than a few of us who wouldn't have minded meeting the prince....). We were told that some of the scenes from the James Bond movie Octopussy where shot at the palace, and we got a few photos to celebrate that fact.

Later, we went to the Princess gardens, where there was basically a lush tropical paradise behind the walls. There were fountainheads along the walkways that got larger if people clapped their hands (like "clap on, clap off, the clapper," but for real!). So we kept clapping on the fountain sprays, and some of us walked right through them. (It was pretty hot by then). There was a lotus pond, too, and for some of us, it was the first time we had ever seen a lotus, let alone hundreds of them. Very cool. The Princess gardens also housed a very quaint and antiquainted museum, sort of a little anthropology and science museum that probably hadn't been updated since the 1930s or 1940s. There was even a display of the "Evolution of Man," with busts of heads and faces, with the lovely white caucasian head (looking like JFK) as the pinnacle....

We had free time this afternoon, and a number of students went out into the main market (not the tourist market). Many purchases were made: embroidered cloth, lots and lots of tea, bangles and bindis, and I suspect several gifts for those folks at home. In these market streets, which are tiny and windy, there were bikes, burrows, cows, goats, men on motorcycles and bicycles moving quickly, tuk-tuks, cars, kids running freely, mice, shops everywhere, fruit and snack carts, construction, shoppers, and even working elephants! It was very full of sight and sound, and it was great to get out and walk around.

We are just back from seeing Rajasthani traditional dancing, which was interesting. A lot of the students have by now purchased Indian clothing, and a number of them were wearing their beautiful and colorful outfits. The dancing was interesting, very close to middle eastern style dancing. One dance was a tea dance, where the dancer lit a fire on his head under a pot in which milk, tea, and sugar were poured, and he danced and balanced on bottles and pots until the tea was cooked. I'm glad all tea doesn't need to be made that way, or I'd be back on coffee!

We leave tomorrow, for our last long bus ride. We are leaving the desert area of Rajasthan and are more into the plains. It's greener but not cooler. Although it is more humid (good for some of us, nightmarish for others!).

Internet access has been challenging. We are finally at a hotel that has the internet, but there is only one computer and it sits back in a sort of storage room. It does move quickly, which seems like a miracle after some of the other computers we have used before. Having such restricted access means less contact, which is unfortunate. I guess we are always hoping that our next place has a lot of fast computers and we have a lot of free time!

More later!

Martha and Andrea