Monday, March 16, 2009

Udaipur



Udaipur at sunset


Udaipur was the first stop in our tour of Rajasthan, the desert state in Western India. The city is best known for its lake, and few palaces, all of which appeared in the James Bond movie Octopussy.

For some reason, the town has almost no restaurants except those on the rooftops of guesthouses, which are twice the price and half as good. I guess the locals always eat at home. Nearly all of the restaurants show Octopussy, and we ended up eating and watching a badly pirated version with about half the movie intact. At least we got to see the places in the movie that we could see from the rooftop. That was pretty cool.

We visited the city palace and snuck around with our cameras to avoid the Rs 250 camera fee. Julia was scolded once. Me? I'm too sneaky. Otherwise the city didn't have too much to see.



A king's tire swing


Julia and I outside the palace


Eating biscuits in the royal courtyard


Some wandering brought us to a neighborhood with little artisan's studios and tons of children around. The kids went nuts when they saw our cameras, begging us to take picture after picture. They love it, and I feel much better about that than giving them the money, chocolate, or pens ("School pen! School pen!") they typically demand.


Udaipur kids


A man makes gold bangles


Working on a silver chain


A bus ride through the desert today brought us to Jodhpur. We're lucky we made it as the bus started to pull away from the roadside restaurant in the middle of the desert without us.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude, are you camping at the University of Jodhpur? Looks like it when I zoom in on the satellite map! ;-) Great kid pix!

Unknown said...

How fun that you've already done another entry. Glad you made the bus! I love the kids picture, too. Hope you take a lot of those. I also like the jewelry making. I didn't know they made the chains by hand. Really? You look so blissed out--it's great to see. Love, Ma

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