There were two options for journeying to Udaipur from Jodhpur. One was to take the pre-scheduled public bus and the other was paying extra for a private jeep 'safari' out to local villages and then onto Jodhpur. We choose the latter, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake. The jeep took us to a Bishnoi villagers' house via a pottery maker and carpet weaver. We were rushed around the village, which was a pretty awkward situation anyway, but mysteriously had plenty of time when it came to spending money...
The whole journey took hours and hours and we got a flat tyre in the middle of a quarry. When we arrived in Udaipur, the driver told us we had to get out of the car as the steering was shot and we bundled into rickshaws for the rest of the journey to the hotel. The other half of the group had arrived about five hours earlier and had been chilling out at leisure when we arrived.
The Narayan Niwal guest house had the worst food service ever. Apple pie arrived a good hour before the main course, and naan bread came when the main course was well and truly eaten. It was a funny old hotel and the acoustics were so good that you could hear all the details of other guests' food repeating on them when you were in your rooms...
Udaipur centres around a big lake with a 'floating' palace hotel and temple. The rest of the town is rammed with traffic and touts and isn't all that pleasant to navigate. This is where the James Bond film 'Octopussy' was filmed. The dvd is available to watch whenever you want at the hotel (and pretty much every night at most places in town!) and we watched about half of it one night until Roger Moore's rubbish one-liners got too much and we went to bed.
We took a pedalo on the lake. '40 minutes' I said to the guy before we set off, but within about 10 our aching legs made us a bit less enthuastic. Some others on our tour, however, had to be towed off when they got stuck in the reeds...
The next day we did a cooking course and learnt how to make a few tasty dishes and some nice spicy tea. We also attended a local cultural show where a lady, who must have been about seventy, balanced nine big pots on her head and a guy who looked like Indian Patrick Swayze danced some puppets around. It was actually quite good.
