Asia 2024 / April 21, 2024

Udaipur

We really liked Udaipur – our favourite city in India so far! This town has such a great vibe. It is known as the White City.

Our Accommodation

We stayed in a 250 year old Haveli smack in the old town by the clock tower that has been in the owner’s family for generations. He recently refurbished it and it had a lot of nice touches.

Mewar Festival

On our second evening, we heard a lot of drums beating so we went up to the roof to see what was happening. There was a whole procession! It turns out that it was a 3 day festival. I have read various accounts of what this festival is about. One version says that it celebrates Krishna’s marriage to his wife and that on this day single women pray to find a good mate and married women pray for a happy marriage. The other account is that the festival celebrates the arrival of Spring.

Either way, women carry idols of the deities Isar and Ganguar in a procession down to the lake. I read one account that says that they then put the idols on a boat and sink them in the lake, but I didn’t see this and it looked like the women were then bringing the idols back following the same procession route. The procession started right at our apartment at the clock tower. We watched them each night for 3 nights walking down to the lake and back. On the first night, there were also fireworks and each night there was music and dancing, etc.

Streets of Old Town

We enjoyed walking around the streets. There was such a great atmosphere in this town and interesting shops.

City Palace

The main tourist attraction in town is the palace. It was the home of the world’s longest ruling Dynasty – the Mewar family. If you zoom in on the image below, you can see the various rulers.

The palace has been turned into a museum which is quite beautiful and interesting information about the lake was made using the diversion of a couple of rivers, and the separated life of women inside the palace. Here are some images of the palace:

India tips we have learned so far

You may have noticed that by the time we were in Udaipur, we all started wearing Indian clothing. This is for a number of reasons:

It is really light weight material so it breathes well and is cool.
The material dries very quickly so we can hand wash them in our hotel rooms and they are dry the next day. Laundry services in India are very expensive, but laundry soap only costs $0.10 and every bathroom comes with 1-2 buckets, so we hand wash a lot.
K and I were getting a lot of stares. So, after about the first day in Delhi, we started wearing sarongs to cover our legs, but the Indian Kurti is way more comfortable to wear – basically feels like you’re wearing pyjamas!

A couple of other tips for India:

In Agra, our homestay owner told us about an app called Blinkit. It’s like an online supermarket and they deliver to you within 10 minutes! It’s in most of the big cities in India. This was great for us in Jaipur because we ordered lots of food, shampoo, toilet paper, etc. for our apartment. Unfortunately, they didn’t deliver in any of the remaining cities we went to.
As a general rule, the beds in India are very, very, very hard! At some of the more expensive hotels we stayed in, they were ok, but most of the time it was impossible to sleep on them. So, while in Jaipur, we bought a couple of single, foam mattresses from Amazon India and carried them around with us.

Buying a Train Ticket

So far we haven’t been on any India trains, but we heard that this is an experience not to be missed! We decided that after we visit Bikaner, we will go to Egypt for our last 3 weeks before Europe instead of exploring Punjab. So, we wanted to buy an overnight train ticket from Bikaner to Delhi. It is basically impossible for foreigners to purchase a ticket from the Indian rail website (even trying to navigate this website causes severe headaches). And we heard bad stories from people who tried to purchase them from 3rd parties (like 12goasia for example) who say you have a ticket only to cancel an hour before the train. So, we decided to go to the train station in Udaipur and purchase our ticket there. This was quite an experience. First, we waited in line at the ticket counter but they told us we needed to go to a different part of the station where the Reservation counter was. Then, we waited in line for ages at the Reservation counter where they told us that there was a train and first class sleeper car available for us, but we had to fill out a paper form first before we could book it. Getting this information out of the clerk too forever, not just because she was slow at looking things up, but because people kept shoving their forms over R’s head into the ticket window and the woman would book their things while it was our turn at the window! Once we filled out our form, we had to wait in line again to give the form and have her actually book the ticket. Again, people were cutting in front and pushing their forms in. But in the end, we finally got a ticket. The overnight train is supposed to take 9 hours, but the only seat available was the longer train – 14 hours! I guess we’ll get to see some of Punjab after all!