Travel article: Udaipur

From Jodhpur to reach Udaipur and stop by the amazing temple Ranakpur it’s easier to hire a driver.

We found 2 other frenchies willing to follow us and share us costs with, here we go to Udaipur!

Unfortunately on our way to meet with the driver, a dog arrived from nowhere and bite me ...(again!) I was up for 5 anti-rabies injection (again!)

In less than 30 minutes I was driven to the “hospital” (if we can call this a hospital...), I was in a queue with another 30 men being bitten by dogs and waiting for anti-rabies injection, the driver made me skipped the line and took me straight to the nurse and without even have time to breath I got an injection of anti-rabies and then she asked me to turn around and injected me in the butt for tetanos! (Cedric had time to close the curtain to hide me from the 30 Indian looking at us!).

1st injection done, 4 to go!

Nice memories from Jodhpur ...!

After a few minutes our driver told us about the 3 rules of driving in India : 1. having a good horn 2. Having good breaks 3. Having luck! We don’t agree with their perception of driving (similar to Latin America): drive like crazy and think you’re protected by some kind of gods...

And to have luck we stopped by a “mortorbike temple” (a story with a guy who got killed while driving a motorbike and the motorbike coming back by itself to the village every night. Weird story we are not sure we understood everything!) where we have been blessed by a guy and got our first Bindi!

Arrived to Ranakpur we discovered an amazing temple all in marble.

The Jain (a religion followed by 0.4% of Indian) built it in the 15th century. The temple has so many details, many rooms, the symmetry is perfect, our best temple. We left thinking we liked the concept of this religion with 5 pillars around “not lying, being totally disconnected to material ownership, consume less, finding total and pure happiness”.

We continue our road to Udaipur.

Our guesthouse was nice but in a street with around 20 cows decided it was their home. That smell... awful! And they charged us when we left at 4am on our last day...!

Udaipur is a bit smaller as the other cities we visited and we were expecting a more chilled atmosphere but this was without counting the many Indian always trying to speak to us, scam us and so on. And most of them speak French ! Tiring.

Udaipur also known as the city of lakes (7 lakes surrounding the city) was built by another Mewar Maharadja when Chittor the previous capital had been attacked by Moghols. As each Maharadja does, as soon as he built Udaipur he built a palace and this one is fantastic! The rooms are all different, really well decorated, there is marble everywhere. We took the audio guide (a new thing for us and we love it!) and have been through years of history (Mewar, Rajput, Moghul, British). He chose well the location with amazing views on the lake.

We then visited the Jagdish temple and really liked the sculptures of elephants etc. We could get use to marble ;)

During our stay we also did some cultural things: a cooking class and we attended a dance show!

We love Indian food so we figured India was the best country to take a class! The cooking class took place in an Indian woman’s kitchen. We spent 4 hours mixing spices (not too many for Cedric ;)) , making chapati, cooking rice and lents, making lassi. We couldn’t wait to try the food ! It was excellent.

At night we went to the Bagore Ki Haveli to attend a local dance show. An Haveli is a former palace owned by merchant with rooms, patio and so on, beautiful.

What a show! We loved the colours of the sari, the sound of the many bracelets, the gestures, the puppet show and the highlight: a lady carrying and dancing with at least 20 pots on her head !

It is already time to go (after getting my 2nd anti-rabies injection...) and discover a new country: Nepal!

We really liked Rajasthan with its rich history, its many temples, the food, the bazaars. We are tired though as it’s busy, noisy and people are oppressing. We leave now for Nepal and hope to get resource and walk again!

Some recommandations:

# It’s quite hard to get in Ranakpur as you can’t bring any leather, any money, any phones inside. 200 INR per person

# arrived first to the City palace, it’s so busy! 300 INR + 200 INR for the audio guide

# we took the cooking class with Mamta. 1,000 INR per person. We recommend it !

# Bagore Ki Haveli show: 150 INR per person + 150 INR for the camera

# It Costs 3,500 INR for a driver from Jodhpur to Udaipur. We were 4 so we shared.