Udaipur, India The Romantic City!

We were looking forward to Udaipur as it had been billed as India's
most romantic city!

Well it is a beautiful city due to it's setting next to a lake with a
beautiful lake palace and city palace. This is all surrounded by
mountains in the distance. Nice.

We arrived early after our first trip in a sleeper bus. Yes you can
sleep on board buses over here. There is a second level of the bus
where you can hide away from the world in your own bed. Sounds nice
but actually not as comfortable as sounds when your bus driver is
trying to do a kamkhazi mission; like all drivers do over here. (they
seem incredibly good at driving very fast and very close to other
drivers but not hitting them) Also if every motorbike driver were to
buy a car in India if you think London traffic is bad just think about
over a billion inhabitants!

At 430am your choice of hostel is fairly limited as most are closed.
So we had trouble finding a decent place. Still Sadma Guest House
treated us well for the first night but we quickly found a lovely
little guest house in town which was only a month old! It was called
Udai Haveli Guest House on Ganesh ganj. We had found it by accident
walking around and was too new to be in the guidebooks. (I am now
starting to think guidebook recommended guest houses & hotels can get
a little complacent with their endless supply of new guests) Wow clean
& new pillows & mattresses. At times in the bathroom; it was so new we
thought we were at home! A revelation in India, so decided this would
be our new home for as long as we stayed here. (7 days)

We visited the Palace, home to what is believed to be the longest
running Royal Family (however now they have no power in democratic
India). It is a beautiful palace on a hill above the lake looking over
to the Lake Palace with some amazing pictures and treasures, some of
which are away at an exhibition on India in London!

We also went up the cable car here (63 rupees) to see the sunset which
was beautiful as it looked out over the city, the palace, the lake
palaces and the mountains beyond! We then watched as all the lights
came on over the city. Very romantic.

Over the next few days we chilled out and did some shopping, ate out
and even managed to get to see Octopussy! I was very happy and Mariana
wasn't too upset either! It's surprising how much of the movie is
filmed here and we went oh look that such and such!

Next day we did our good deed for the trip and helped out at a local
animal hospital. They looked after dogs, donkeys, and cattle mostly.
It was so sad to see some of them that had been paralysed after being
run over and no one cared. This is the sad part of this country that
there are so many stray dogs and no one seems to care for them. So we
did our bit for the day which was just looking after them, feeding
them or for the donkeys talking to them and giving them a good brush.
I only wished I could have done more but moat of them that could get
better were getting better. The donkeys had been treated badly by
getting them to carry crazy loads on their backs until their legs
litterally buckled under them and sometimes broke! It was so sad, but
also nice to see that at least these animals were being looked after
so well.

We left Udaipur a little sad as we had both really enjoyed this lovely
city on our overnight bus sleeper to Bundi, our next stop. (yes over
here you can have your own separate cabin to sleep in with a double
bed, strange but pretty comfy!)