Last Week in Rajasthan

I'm coming to the end of my trip in the northern end of India, as I start to head south to Mumbai to meet some old friends for southern India travel. My last week in Rajasthan was spent mostly in Udaipur and Mt. Abu, with a side trip to Ranakpur.
The beginning of the week started out messy. Remember the John Candy movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles? I had a similar 48 hour exhausting trip trying to get from point A (Jaisalmer) to point B (Udaipur), only this version should be titled Camels, Trains, and Busses.
bags under eyes, desperately in need of sleep, need a shower, a shave, a haircut, new clothes, basically need a reality TV show style makeover There is always a festival in India. And while trying to get to Udaipur, one of the biggest and most colorful festivals, Holi was going on. People throw pigment of bright pink, green, yellow, blue, etc. on each other (supposedly as a celebration of Shiva) and when mixed with water becomes a permanent color change on your clothes, and semi-permanent on your skin. The streets by the early afternoon were all a river of purple (which seems to be the end color product when all the dyes are mixed). It takes about 2 to 3 days to wear off your skin. No matter how hard they scrub and shower, white tourists look like they have a case of third degree sunburn for a few days, and blondes look like streaked pink haired punk rockers. These photos were taken in Jodhpur where I was stuck in limbo for 5 hours during Holi, in between an overnight train and a long night bus ride.
I would have had taken better war photos, but I feared destruction of personal property if I took my camera out. Or at a bare minimum, a new color for my black Nikon.
a cow that got Holi-ed
Udaipur feels more like a vacation on a lake in Switzerland than being in India.
Check this 5-star island hotel in the middle of the lake that I took from my $4 rooftop hotel. Looks like someone plopped a big birthday cake in the lake.
This hotel, and Udaipur in general is famous for having the James Bond movie Octopussy shot here. They show this movie in most of the restaurants every night so that you don't forget this fact. We rented paddleboats to paddle around the lake, but you are forbidden from paddling to within 50 meters of this hotel. I think Roger Moore will shoot you if you do.
Just beyond the Octopussy hotel is this 7-star hotel (curved sandstone dome things in the distance to the left). I never knew 7-star category existed. This is India's most expensive hotel and every room has a private pool. Is there even a 6-star category or did they just skip it since 7-star requirements are so outrageous.
The French Riviera…..I mean, Udaipur, India
The imposing and elegant city palace, home to the maharaja
Even has a disco room…..
....and this absurd toilet. Funny thing is, this tiny room actually smelled like someone just went.
The incredible Jain Temples of Ranakpur, some of the most exquisite and intricately carved places I've ever seen. It's made out of marble, and there are 1444 columns, no 2 alike. Feels like walking into a giant wedding cake…..only not smushy…or sweet,....or fattening…..or anything like a wedding cake….don't know where I'm going with this….just enjoy the photos.








On the way back to Udaipur from the temples, there was a bus/car accident about 15 km outside of town. The accident was handled in typical Indian fashion – a bunch of people standing around yelling at each other, getting nothing accomplished.
With traffic piling up a mile back both ways, someone finally realized that maybe we should move the bus so that at least one lane was operating. Of course the first vehicle to go through afterwards was another bus that managed to wedge itself between the hill and the broken down bus. This is another typical Indian response - just hit the gas and go, and worry about any repurcusions later. Knowing that the nearest emergency services vehicle is probably in Europe, I was guessing that this mess wouldn't be cleaned up anytime soon. So I hitched a ride back into town with a goods carrying rickshaw. The kid driving didn't hesitate, and made me sit in the front of his tiny rickshaw next to him. Of course, he spoke only 5 words of English to compliment my extensive 5 words of Hindi vocabulary. So we ended up communicating by talking about the most common denominator for the male gender, which is girls. This icebreaker was made easy because the window of his rickshaw was plastered with all these stickers of female Bollywood movie stars. He kept blowing air kisses at them, or clutching his heart while singing in Hindi. He showed me a soundtrack tape of one of the stars he was in love with, and played it on his Fisher Price stereo mono system. It's easy to sing along since every song is a never ending repeating chorus played over and over and over and over and over…… 15 minutes later……and over and over again. But it was a lot of fun bonding with my new friend even though the high pitched harmonies nearly ruptured my spleen. But I did truly appreciate the ride. Guardian angels come in weird shapes and sizes…and singing abilities. In the end, he did a very non-Indian thing, by not asking for any sort of payment for giving me a ride. For as long as I've travelled, I'm still always amazed by the kindness of strangers.
Another thing I'm amazed by is…Dónde está Ché Pelotas?