Udaipur

Day 105: another overnight bus

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The only thing I wanted to do was return to the Marionette shop and buy a dancing princess. The day before when I dropped in and asked for prices, they didn’t seem high and I thought I could get them even lower. When we went back, the shop was full of men (not the woman I spoke to the day before) and the prices nearly tripled. It was fun to see the back room full of fancy marionettes and see them dance, and as much as I wanted the dancing princess, I couldn’t pay triple for one. Thankfully, another small shop had fair prices and even if they didn’t have an elaborate dancing princess, they did have a marionette horse that made up for it!

We wanted to take a train to Mumbai. It would have been faster, but all of the trains were full, so we had to take another overnight bus. We almost didn’t make it. Some of the overnight buses park in random places and our rickshaw driver had no idea where it was. After, of course, we piled into his rickshaw and had been on the road for ten minutes or so… It was also the slowest rickshaw in all of India. He stopped for directions a few times, thought he took us to the correct place, only to find no bus. When we got back into his rickshaw,

he asked: When is your bus?

we responded: 6:30

driver: Ohhh very big problem! And what time is it now?

Andrew: 6:31

driver: Ohhh very big problem!

Luckily, the bus was still there. I have no idea how we made it. And it turned out to be the nicest bus we’ve been on yet!

Day 104: City Palace, Udaipur

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After a visit to Jagdish Temple, we headed to City Palace, Udaipur! Udaipur used to be the captial of Mewar. It’s the largest in Rajasthan, and its designs felt over the top and luxurious, and I know we didn’t even see the entire complex!

Jagdish Temple is pretty much right next to one of the major intersections in Udaipur. The temple is also so compact that it was difficult to get any pictures in its entirety, but it was a nice respite to flee from the busy little surrounding streets.

Not far from the temple, was The City Palace. It’s actually right up the street, and after we skipped Jodhpur’s City Palace/Hotel, I was curious to see what this City Palace – THE thing to do in Udaipur- was all about. The fees to get into the City Palace, Udaipur were a little bit outrageous. One of our pet peeves of India are the fees that are always tacked on. The camera fee for The City Palace was almost as much as the fee to get into! Andrew and I decided we were going to take pictures like CRAZY to make up for it, but I won’t bore you with all of them!

The palace was fancy, but very crowded. I think there were a few field trips going on because we would sometimes find a courtyard or a room filling up with middle school-aged boys and Andrew and I would sneak away before it turned into another impromptu photo shoot. (Which are super fun when it’s a handful of children, but very different when it’s an entire school!)

These boys chased us down when we walked out of the palace for a picture. (I have to say I was relieved we managed to get through the entire palace with only ONE photo like this!)