“Us kids know...”-The
Arcade Fire, “No Cars Go”
Locations: Udaipur (Rajasthan)
Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050526&l=7b62b&id=1101094
Temperature: 97
Morale: 6
Spinning: The Arcade Fire - EP, The Arcade Fire - Funeral, The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
Reading: Lonely Planet
Talking: To touts: as little as possible. Which means I wasn't really talking to anyone.
What's next (I think): Overnight bus to Ajmer, then on to Pushkar.
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The Arcade Fire is a truly great band. Check out the EP if you’ve never heard it—it’s the least produced of the three albums, but sometimes that’s an asset.
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I woke up around 8am to a cool breeze coming off the lake and into my window. It felt amazing, and for once on this trip I was just the right temperature. Oh 400 rupee room, how I love thee.
I didn't shower (!), got dressed, and headed to a place called the Lake View Hotel for breakfast. It had the highest roof deck in the area, so I figured I'd get a nice view of the lake and the city.
Indeed, the view was great, as was the food (omelet and toast—why can't I figure out what Indians eat for breakfast?). But the weather turned out to be not so great. In the half hour or so that I was on the roof, the temperature increased by something like 37 degrees and, simultaneously, the humidity tripled. Want to guess the next sentence? Yup, my shirt was soaked with sweat by the end of the meal.
I finished breakfast and walked back down to the street and around the corner to Jagdish Temple, which is a Hindu temple with some nice statues—one a black stone depiction of Vishnu, and the other a brass image of Garuda (Vishnu's man-bird vehicle). It may not sound that great, but as temples go this one was pretty cool. There were something like 30 worshipers inside, and they were chanting as the priest made some weird gestures at the front of the temple. I sat there and pretended I knew what was going on.
I walked out of the temple and up the road toward the City Palace. Here's where the “tourist infrastructure but no tourists” thing comes into play. I was approached by something like 27 different touts (in this case I'm not employing hyperbole) in a stretch of 100 meters, all of them trying to get me to come into their shop (the good) or asking me what country I was from and how long I was staying in Udaipur (the bad) or asking me what guest house I was staying in or, better yet, “Where you going?” (the ugly).
That's right, “Where you going?” That's only a hair more tolerable than the Egyptian favorite “Where you go?” I never thought India could descend that far.
But not all of India, or even Rajasthan, was this bad. In Bundi, for instance, the only people who approached me were children, who came running up to me to ask my name or to ask where I was from or to ask for “ten rupees” or “one photo.” I hadn't experienced that in Srinagar or Leh or Manali or McLeod Ganj or Chandigarh (although I did experience it in Delhi a bit, and in Amritsar, but with Indian tourists who weren't from Amritsar, so that doesn't really count). But it was kids who were coming up and bugging me, so it was kind of cute. Plus, it was the first time I had had to deal with it (with the exception of the less concentrated episodes in Delhi and Amritsar), so it was more tolerable.
Most importantly, in Bundi the adults knew better. For the most part, they left you alone. That isn't the case in Udaipur. The adults are much worse than the kids. I seriously can't get a moment's peace here. I have to sneak into an alley to have a look at my guidebook—otherwise I have three Indian dudes looking over my shoulder trying to “help me.”
Anyhow, the constant hustlers continued for the whole of my time in Udaipur, and made what was a really nice city seem quite a bit worse. I'm not going to talk about them any more in this email, but that doesn't mean they didn't continue to annoy me. They did.
I walked up to the City Palace past the hoards of touts, and I bought my ticket for the boat trip that takes you past the Lake Palace Hotel and then stops off at Jagmandir Island (the other island in the lake, which also has a palace on it, though one that’s not nearly as impressive as the Lake Palace). The first boat left at 10, so I made it down to the dock just before then, and it turned out that I was the only person there. So I got my own private cruise! Nice! Although the only thing it got me was as much time as I wanted on Jagmandir Island, which turned out to be about five minutes (you couldn't actually go in the palace). In any case, “low season” for tourism in India is indeed low.
But the views of the Lake Palace were amazing. The thing is pure white and intricately detailed, and it really does look like it's floating on water. It was featured in Octopussy (Bond film), actually, which no one in the town lets you go more than five minutes without hearing about (multiple restaurants show the film every single night).
After the boat trip I headed to the City Museum, which was worthwhile because it was the first time I had seen much Indian art (although admittedly this was all done by court artists, which is a pretty small sector of Indian art). The first thing that struck me was the level of detail: most paintings featured hundreds of people, usually soldiers, and each person was depicted in excruciatingly fine detail. Those court artists must have spent months on these things.
Also, most paintings depicted battles between Rajasthani rulers (for instance, the Rajputs) and foreign armies (usually the Mughals). The paintings always made the Rajasthani side look glorious and invincible. Too bad they lost most of the battles.
After the City Museum I went to the Bagore-Ki-Haveli, which is basically an old, 138-room haveli (a traditional, ornately decorated Rajasthani home, in case you've forgotten) that has been restored to what it would have looked like back in the 18th century. In general I don't love restoration jobs, but this one was well-done. The most interesting things were 1) a manual fan that hung from the ceiling and had to be pulled (via a rope that was attached) by a servant to cool the person sitting on the other side, and 2) the world's biggest turban, which was about three feet wide and two feet high, and in a glass case. I wondered how much I'd have to pay someone to pull on a rope and fan me for the rest of the trip. Probably not much.
After the museums I headed back to my guest house and made it back just before the monsoon hit. When it rains in India, it rains.
I ate dinner that night at a place called Sunrise, where I talked with a French girl (another tourist? No way!) and the owner for most the meal. It was a leisurely, relaxing dinner, which was exactly what I needed after a morning of run-ins with touts. And I still love Indian food, although my digestive system likes it a bit less.
After dinner I headed to the bus station to catch my overnight bus to Ajmer, but I'll leave that to tomorrow's Pushkar update.
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