Udaipur - The Lake City

We got dropped off at the train station and finally got to get rid of our snarky driver! The train to Udaipur took five and a half hours and we got to meet the most spoiled brat in India! Yes! We were all ready to take his toy gun away and stick him and his father in another car pretty quickly. And by 'we' I mean the entire train car of people! Other than the annoying kid, we also had a singing lady and a seat kicker on our trip. We just had to laugh at the ridiculousness of the whole thing.

We got picked up from the train station in Udaipur by our new driver, Ranjeet, who was great! Udaipur is known as the Lake City (and thankfully the lake was still there even with the poor monsoon) and the Venice of the East. The beautiful Lake Pichola surrounded our hotel and many others. It was nice to be by the water and see the reflections of the buildings and sunsets. We didn't stay at the Lake Palace, but we had nice views of it when we ate meals at the restaurant at our hotel. The James Bond film, Octopussy, was filmed there and just about every other rooftop restaurant had showings of the movie in the evenings.

We saw some more ghats - these used for bathing and clothes-washing - and sleeping, if you are a cow.

We got to see this cutie playing catch with a ball of aluminum foil on the ghats one day at sunset. His mom was beautiful and just watched him and smiled the whole time.

Here are some other faces we saw in Udaipur.

This guy made me a chapatti flipper for about 40 cents.

We visited some cenotaphs of the maharajas of Mewar (the former name of Udaipur) which were built over a period of 350 years.

We spent New Year's Eve here in Udaipur. Our night consisted of going out to a rooftop restaurant and then watching the fireworks over the lake. They were set off from a boat in the lake.

We did some good shopping and lots of wandering through the streets. One memorable pickup line we heard was, "Which country is suffering without you?" It was a little better than the guys just asking us where we were from.

Our hotel once again:

More photos at Flickr.

--Sarah--