We saw how the ladies wash clothes in the lake.
First trip to India, January 2015
Day 18, January 26
Udaipur
First trip to India, January 2015
Itinerary
Yesterday we planned to go to Kumbhalgarh — there is a beautiful large fort there. We checked out of the hotel and walked to the bus station. On the way, a dog bit me, very unexpectedly. There are a lot of stray dogs in India. You even stop paying attention to them. At first glance they all seem quite friendly. This dog was ordinary, like all the others. And when I walked past, it came up and bit me for no reason at all; when I turned around, it was looking guilty. Volchiy told me to rub the wound with sanitizer (a bottle of liquid we bought on our first day in India. Supposedly it kills all germs, and we use it before eating if there’s no way to wash our hands).
At the bus station, the man in the window said there were no buses to Kumbhalgarh.
- There is no bus service to Kumbhalgarh. Go ask the private agencies.
We wandered off to ask the private agencies, of which there turned out to be quite a lot not far from the bus station. However, none of them had a bus to Kumbhalgarh... Oh well, then it’s not meant to be.
We decided to stay at MewariVilla; we stayed here on our first visit to Udaipur. This time we chose the cheapest room, for 500 rupees. It was smaller, without a lake view from the room.
After checking in, we went for a walk around Udaipur, passing through the familiar streets for what must have been the hundredth time. By now we had already started to find our way around Udaipur without a map.
We wanted to buy some beer in a shop, since it’s cheaper there than in restaurants, but all the shops where beer might have been sold were closed. On the way we bought me a little sweater instead of my tunic — it had torn completely. At first the seller asked 200 rupees for it, but we bargained it down to 100. The sweater was a bit faded because it had been hanging at the entrance to the shop, but he didn’t have another one like it.
We went into some local park with a non-working fountain and an amazing tree on which strange fruits hung, shaped like large brown zucchinis. Volchy found one of them on the ground; it turned out to be incredibly heavy, so we concluded it’s better not to walk under such trees.
Then we wandered into a very poor, non-touristy neighborhood. The streets here were narrow, rising and falling all the time… On one of them, children surrounded us and started screaming. A dog immediately got worked up too and, apparently thinking we were hurting the children, began barking at us. It barked loudly and quite aggressively. We hurried to leave the place, and the dog ran after us, continuing to bark menacingly. I tried not to rush and not to show it, even though I was scared. Once we got out onto a busier road, we kept walking.
Volchy decided that he was done with walking through such rundown little neighborhoods…
With great difficulty we made it back to the hotel and breathed a sigh of relief.
We went up to the roof of our hotel, and from there there was a very beautiful view of the whole city with its lakes, numerous little bridges, and palace-hotels. The whole city is surrounded by hills; in the distance, the half-abandoned Monsoon Palace was visible on one of the hills. Children were flying kites — a favorite pastime of local kids. Some of the kites were soaring very high in the sky.
Later we went to eat at the Lotus restaurant, which we had read about in the Lonely Planet.
For some reason, the restaurant had moved to the neighboring building. We climbed all the way to the top, to the roof. You could see the sun setting below the horizon and bathing the City Palace in a copper light.
We had chapati flatbreads and chicken curry for dinner. For the first time on our trip in India, we ate meat. We also drank a whole teapot of Indian tea from beautiful white cups.