Octopussy

We arrived in Udaipur from Jodhpur on a bus that was clearly not meant for tall people. The Indian coach busses have sleeper compartments above the seats and we were seated right at the back of the bus where each bump is amplified 10 time and we had the pleasure of taking a 400km journey on a torn up road that was being widened. When we arrived our heads were bruised and we were both a bit tired and cranky, and to top it all off someone puked all over the aisle.

We arrived just after sunset and all of the horror of the bus ride was immediately erased when we found our hotel by the lake. Udaipur is beautiful, tall clean white buildings, a great calm lake (don't get too close or it spoils it a bit) and it is surrounded by green foothills.

Despite all of that beauty it is still India and we stepped out from our hotel to find that the swear outside had exploded and there was litere

Being curried out at this point of the trip, the super touristy western restaurants we very appealing to us here and we took the opportunity to mend out stomachs with a fine German bakery, and Italian dinner (fresh made pasta if you can believe it). Despite our yearning for a good western meal, we decided to take cooking lessons which turned out to be at some guys mansion 30 mins outside of the city. Vishal, Jess and I all piled on to his motorcycle and headed off to his house in the hills. We spent the day learning how to make a few different curries, snacks, and Indian breads, and he showed us all of the different masalas and when and how to use them.

James Bond's Octopussy plays here and all of the guest houses have a screening every night at 7pm on the rooftop terrace. We were both excited to just sit and watch a movie for a night and it was cool to look out off the roof and see where each scene was shot. Fun for us but it must be torture for the hotel workers who have seen it every day since 1990.

You can only sit by a lake and drink beer so long before you have to get in it so we hired a boat to take us around the lake at sunset and getting close the the floating palace was pretty spectacular.

We both enjoyed Udaipur is was relaxing and the food was great. Our next step is to move down south to Kerela via a flight from Mumbai so stay tuned.

Finally Pictures

Ian learning to cook delicious Indian food

a sunset cruise of lake pichola

water palace

a view of udaipur from the water

inside the palace