Our life in a strange world...: Kinnu and I head to Udaipur

While Bradd was toiling away at work, Kinnu and I decided to take a trip. Well, she had already planned it and I decided to tag along. Udaipur is about 4 hours North of Ahmedabad in the bordering state of Rajasthan. Udaipur is well known as the city of lakes, although I think of it as the city of palaces as there are a plethora of them all over the city and surrounding areas. It really is beautiful there as it's landscape is rugged, hilly and for the most part - green. A great change of scenery from the dry and dusty city of Ahmedabad. The old city of Udaipur is a labyrinth of narrow streets and back alleys and all hills filled with skinny shops squeezed into every nook and cranny.

As Kinnu and I walked the streets, we were constantly bombarded with "Hello madam" and " Come look at these scarves, come look! Silk and cashmere!" or just a forceful "Good morning!". Mostly they wanted to sell us whatever. It's a huge tourist attraction and but still great shopping; jewelry, textiles, spices, and silk paintings are the specialties there. Oh! and such great prices - mostly. Most of the streets headed straight up go towards the City Palace which is now half museum- half fancy hotel and headed down go straight to Lake Pichola, which is the biggest lake in the area.

Our hotel, Jaiwana Haveli, was sitting very near the bottom of the streets near the lake shore which affords all the small hotels along there great views of the lake. Most have roof-top dining albeit mediocre food. Anybody enjoying these roof-top view then has front row seats to see the Lake Palace Hotel which is the very posh hotel made famous by the James Bond flick, Octopussy. It really is quite a sight - it sits on and encompasses it's own island in the middle of Lake Pichola. Very cool. We wanted to take one of the many tour boats around the lake and possibly stop at the Lake Palace Hotel but after a long uphill trek, found out they weren't running. Ugh. But I got some great shots of some fancily dressed camels!