Udaipur (Ood-ey-pore)

The City of Lakes

The sleeper bus departed on time from Rajkot. Jess, afraid of becoming travel sick, decided to sleep straight away. She pulled on her sleeping bag liner and got her head down. The bus had a few pickups after ours, so it took a while to get comfortable with the noise of people joining and stopping through the city streets. Once we were on the way properly, I managed to read for a few hours before also trying to get some sleep. It didn’t come easy; the rules of the road in India seem to be based on deployment of the horn for various driving actions—indicating, passing, turning, approaching a junction. Some bikes just zoom past with it constantly held on. The bus, having quite a loud horn as well as a melodic second horn, stirred me several times.

Then, as we started winding through the hills up to Udaipur, every turn would fling us, like Lil Jon said, ‘from the window to the wall.’ The bus made several rest stops, and groggily, we decided to use one at 4 am. Not the nicest, but a relief from lying down for 8 hours. It was only 2 hours more until we arrived at Udaipole (the bus station), slightly ahead of schedule.

Our phones did not automatically pick up a signal as they had in Mumbai and Rajkot, so we couldn’t use Uber to hail a rickshaw or car. There were plenty of rickshaw drivers vying for our trade, but they were pulling out all the excuses as to why they were charging so much. “It’s 6 am, too early, you won’t find another.” We agreed on a price, ₹120 (just over a pound), and we were on our way to the hotel.

We had decided in Rajkot that since we hadn’t spent much there, we would splurge a little on some luxury for our next stop—it is our honeymoon, after all, and Udaipur is the “most romantic spot on the continent of India.” We stayed in the Manuscript Jhilwara Haveli (Haveli = Mansion), a lovely boutique hotel with a rooftop pool overlooking the old city and city palace. The concierge was a little surprised to see us stumble in just after 6 am, mentioning it was a bit early for check-in. We stored our bags and inquired about breakfast; the restaurant wouldn’t be open until 7:30. With some limited signal, we managed to work out that not many other places would be open before then, so we waited in the lobby until the concierge called us and told us to go up to the 4th-floor restaurant.

We had a feast, as we hadn’t eaten much the day before worrying about the overnight bus. The buffet was put to full effect, the only downside being no orange juice for me. After sating our stomachs, we decided to go and have a look at the rooftop pool. We found a nice daybed/sun lounger to lay on, and I think we both immediately fell asleep. We were woken suddenly by one of the staff informing us that our room was ready; it was just before 10 am, which was a surprise.

We checked in and were shown to our room, which had the comfort and cleanliness we were expecting, though it was on the ground floor. After catching up on some more rest after the restless night on the bus, we walked into the newer part of the city looking for a mobile phone shop to get a local SIM card. After a few wrong turns and a detour to look at wedgie jeans in the Levi’s shop for Jess, we found it. It was very busy, but once we were seen, the man there was very attentive and helpful, setting us up with an eSIM, though it took him about an hour to do it. Luckily, the Airtel shop had AC. It would take a further couple of hours to activate, so we walked back toward the old city and the lakeside.

After over a week in India, I was starting to get a little fed up with curry for every meal. They say “variety is the spice of life,” but the spicy food was getting a bit too much for me, and I had a hankering for something more Western. We found a rooftop vegetarian café with some different items on the menu; Jess had a Pad Thai, and I had some sort of Mexican bowl with nachos, corn, beans, etc. (It was very tasty but this turned out to be a mistake.) We watched the sunset over the lake and soaked in the atmosphere. Down below us by the lakeside was a busy area, so we decided to go and have a look. It was very touristy, with lots of people taking selfies and someone with a podium that took a rotating video of you standing on it. I didn’t inquire about the price—not my sort of thing.

With the sun firmly set, I had a bit of a thirst and had found another rooftop with a bar on Google Maps, so we walked there via the hotel to drop off some of our things. Gujarat is a dry state, but Rajasthan is not. The bar only served large beers (what a shame), which went down a treat. We played Monopoly Deal and looked out over the city, with fireworks illuminating the sky in the distance, the city palace lit up on the horizon and bizarrely Christmas carols playing through the speakers.

We returned to the hotel, showered, and headed up for breakfast. My stomach didn’t feel quite right (thanks to the nachos earlier), so I stuck to toast while Jess enjoyed a feast. I don’t think I got my money’s worth; it was ₹500, so we didn’t get the hotel breakfast again while we were there. We decided to stick around the hotel for a bit to allow my stomach to settle. There’s a cool courtyard with a fountain in the middle and comfortable seats around the edges. I finished my first book of the trip, A Dance with Dragons, and took care of some life admin, while Jess got to work writing the first posts for this very blog. In the afternoon, when the heat had died down a bit, we headed up to the rooftop and relaxed by the pool.

Hungry, we headed out before sunset to find another rooftop restaurant for dinner. We found a hotel further down by the lakeside with an even better view of the lake than the night before. We must have arrived too early, as they couldn’t serve the aloo tikka we ordered since the tandoor wasn’t on yet. So, we settled on some paneer, a vegetable curry, and a veg biryani. They also happened to serve beer at this restaurant, so I had a couple. The only downside (if you know me well) was that the restaurant was on the 4th floor, and the restroom was on the ground floor with no elevator. This meant that I ran into the proprietor of the hotel, who immediately recognized the Spurs shirt I was wearing. Turns out he was a Chelsea fan, and we had a good chat about football. He gave us some tips on things to do and places to see around Udaipur. He invited us back to watch the game that evening, but with an 11:30 pm kickoff, I opted to watch from the comfort of the hotel. Spurs lost 3-2 to Galatasaray; I only made it to the 50th minute before the stream cut out, and I didn’t have the patience to get it working again.

On the way back, Jess was tempted by some clothes she saw in one of the shops, Bombay Fabrics. The shopkeeper was friendly and not too pushy with the sale. Jess ended up getting two pairs of trousers and two tops. I got a shirt, but the sleeves were too long, so he offered to take them up, and we could pick it up tomorrow.

The next day, we woke up late and went into the old city for breakfast/lunch—I don’t think they do brunch in India. We then visited the City Palace, a hodgepodge of buildings constructed by various local Maharanas (kings) over 400 years. It’s a popular attraction, and the tour through the palace was very crowded, as the guide trying to upsell his services had warned us. You have to push your way through to read the information about the exhibits. It starts with a display of weapons, and I was most intrigued by some revolvers imported from London, though Jess was keen to move past this section.

You then move through a prescribed route, up and down narrow staircases, and along corridors to various rooms and courtyards, each built by a different ruler according to the fashion and skills of the time. The palace overlooks Lake Pichola, a manmade lake built by the Maharana to manage water in the region. All the lakes in Udaipur are manmade for this reason; they were some of the first to divert and link rivers for this purpose. Other exhibits showcased architecture, paintings, palanquins, silver, and sculptures. My favorite was the maps, showing several ancient maps as well as maps from the Survey of India. We spent nearly three hours at the museum, and the heat had gotten to us, so we headed back to the hotel to freshen up before going to the Rameshwar Ghat to catch a boat.

The boat trip was a 20-minute cruise around Lake Pichola, where we could see the City Palace from the water and get a close-up view of the Lake Palace (now a luxury hotel, made famous by James Bond – Octopussy). The boat dropped us off at Jagmandir Island Palace, another lake palace built by the Maharanas, where we could walk around and take in the architecture and gardens. It’s also a hotel, so some areas were closed off to the public. I’m not sure I’d like to stay there with all the tourists poking around. We waited until just before sunset to catch the boat back to the mainland so we could see the sun dipping behind the mountains as we skimmed across the still waters. We walked back up past the City Palace to the old town and had dinner at the “Natural View” restaurant, with a very similar view to the night before since it was just across the road.

We popped back to Bombay Fabrics to pick up my shirt, but upon trying it on, one sleeve was now longer than the other. I then spotted another shirt that I liked, which also needed the sleeves altered, so we’d have to return again tomorrow.

Our penultimate day in Udaipur, we woke up early and went for a 10km run around Lake Pichola. You have to run early in India for two main reasons: the heat and the traffic. The first part of the run through the old city was challenging, dodging cows, rickshaws, and snarling dogs. We figured out that making more noise as we approached the dogs helped to prevent them from getting startled. Once we made it out of the city, the route around the other side of the lake was much more peaceful and rural (though from previous runs abroad, I made sure to avoid the military base).

As we neared the final stretch back towards Udaipur, two cyclists approached along the lakeside road. As we got closer, one of them shouted out, “Spurs Fan!” It was the same man from the restaurant the other night. He whizzed by, and we didn’t get a chance to catch up on Spurs’ dismal performance and Chelsea’s battering of Noah, it made us smile though. We decided to make the most of our extravagant (for us) hotel and spent the rest of the day lounging by the pool.

In the early evening, we headed out to the other large lake in Udaipur, Fateh Sagar. We tried to get a rickshaw on Ola (we could now register an account with Jess’s Indian e-SIM), but we didn’t have any luck, so we decided to walk. It was a nice walk, but we didn’t quite make it for sunset. The last few hundred meters were on a busy ring road with no pavement, which felt a bit sketchy. Fateh Sagar was crowded with local tourists and hawkers selling snacks, so we didn’t stay long. We were both tired from the run earlier and the walk over, so we found a restaurant to have a drink and read for a while, then later enjoyed some food.

We had to get back to the old city before 9pm to collect our laundry and pick up the shirts. I had trouble with Uber, but Jess managed to get a car through Ola. After a lengthy wait, the driver arrived and said he couldn’t take us where we wanted because the roads were closed. He offered to take us the long way around, but the price would be double. Not sure what to do and feeling a bit stranded, we managed to negotiate the price down a little and took the longer route back. We made it just in time to collect our laundry and the shirts, which now fit perfectly. We paid and headed back to the hotel.

Our final morning, we went for another run around the bird park before checking out of the hotel. We had a simple breakfast in the old city, as we would be taking another bus later in the day. We spent the rest of the day relaxing by the pool. I finished my second book, and Jess made progress with hers. We had lunch at the hotel restaurant—Jess had a masala sandwich, and I had pesto pasta. It was a bit too creamy, not like the pesto I’m used to, but it was good food for traveling. We then collected our bags and started making our way to the bus station. The rickshaw driver tried to inflate the price (traffic, apparently, though it always seems to be busy), but we stuck to our guns and paid the same price as on the way there.

We made it to the bus stand with plenty of time and boarded to continue our journey to Jodhpur.