Rajasthan Trip 2007 - Udaipur
Our day 2 started off from Jodhpur at 6 o'clock bus to Udaipur. The bus was a Silver Line (decently luxurious) bus of Rajasthan State Road Transport. It had push-back seats and provided us a not-so-bad position for sleeping. Sleep was necessary after the night out at the wedding, and expecting that we had finalised on catching this particular bus (The other buses in the morning are ordinary).
The route to Udaipur was through a National Highway. The roads were good and the driver was a patient guy. He was in no mood to reach his destination quickly and so the journey took us 7 hrs where it should have taken only 5-5.30 hrs.
Getting down at the Udaipur bus stand we were flanked by local guides, telling us about a few options for hotels. We took a guy in confidence to show us some cheap hotels to stay. The first look of the city had a depressing effect on both of us and the state of the art rooms of cheap hotels showed to us added to it. After rejecting a couple of pathetic rooms (read cheap) and a couple decent ones (read outside our budget) we settled for something in between.
What added to our despondency was the gloom in the climate. The sky was overcast and the roads wet from the just ended drizzle. The murkiness instilled laziness and we resumed our sleep (half-left from the bus). Hunger woke us up at around 4pm. Ordering a late lunch through the room service, we scanned through the channels on the TV, from sports to news to movies to music videos.
The lunch was not bad (you can understand that we were hungry. :-) ). Getting down to the reception, we enquired about the places for sight seeing in the city. Most of the places seemed to be ordinary except the lake and the city palace. So we decided to take up the lake first. After lot of bargain with an autowallah, we took a round trip from the hotel, covering the lake and a few gardens. Later, we regretted our decision though.
The first destination was Maharana Pratap Smarak on a hilltop. There was a statue of the old king, riding his horse, and a few ruins of an old fort around it. Fateh Sagar lake, visible below was our next stop. The lake is reasonably big and the cloudy sky reflecting from the waters gave a gray look to surroundings. We took a boat ride to the Nehru Park Island in the middle of the lake.
Disappointment is the apt word that sums up our experience in Udaipur. The typical parks full of local people, the mediocre quality of the crowd (no chicks around :( in Udaipur) and the unnecessary cost incurred in going to all the ordinary places (as we had bargained it earlier, we had no option of cutting it out) ended up with a disastrous dinner. We had thought of having 'Daal-Baati' a Rajasthani specialty. I had tasted it earlier in a hotel in Delhi, that served Rajasthani Thali. But I should say the dish that we had that day was unfogettable as I struggled to finish off the meal.
The only good outcome of the day was the shopping. The autowallah took us to a handicraft emporium where we saw sarees and kurtas made of banana silk and bamboo fibres. We purchased one each of both varieties as a momento (We dint expect any other good things to be remembered from there). Expecting the next day to be better, we resigned for the day and slept off pretty quickly.
Early morning walk around the Pichhola lake was refreshing. It brought back our trekking spirits. We were the first visitors to reach the City Palace Museum on the lake side. The museum is pretty big. It was all usual stuff and the magnanimity of Mehrangarh Fort at Jodhpur made things here very typical. We rushed off through the last few sections of the museum which were boring paintings and photographs of old kings and queens and their foreigner friends. We couldn't waste our time here and were restless to get to our final destination of the trip, Mount Abu.
A transport bus plied to Abu Road with us gladly saying goodbye to Udaipur.
The route to Udaipur was through a National Highway. The roads were good and the driver was a patient guy. He was in no mood to reach his destination quickly and so the journey took us 7 hrs where it should have taken only 5-5.30 hrs.
Getting down at the Udaipur bus stand we were flanked by local guides, telling us about a few options for hotels. We took a guy in confidence to show us some cheap hotels to stay. The first look of the city had a depressing effect on both of us and the state of the art rooms of cheap hotels showed to us added to it. After rejecting a couple of pathetic rooms (read cheap) and a couple decent ones (read outside our budget) we settled for something in between.
What added to our despondency was the gloom in the climate. The sky was overcast and the roads wet from the just ended drizzle. The murkiness instilled laziness and we resumed our sleep (half-left from the bus). Hunger woke us up at around 4pm. Ordering a late lunch through the room service, we scanned through the channels on the TV, from sports to news to movies to music videos.
The lunch was not bad (you can understand that we were hungry. :-) ). Getting down to the reception, we enquired about the places for sight seeing in the city. Most of the places seemed to be ordinary except the lake and the city palace. So we decided to take up the lake first. After lot of bargain with an autowallah, we took a round trip from the hotel, covering the lake and a few gardens. Later, we regretted our decision though.
The first destination was Maharana Pratap Smarak on a hilltop. There was a statue of the old king, riding his horse, and a few ruins of an old fort around it. Fateh Sagar lake, visible below was our next stop. The lake is reasonably big and the cloudy sky reflecting from the waters gave a gray look to surroundings. We took a boat ride to the Nehru Park Island in the middle of the lake.
Disappointment is the apt word that sums up our experience in Udaipur. The typical parks full of local people, the mediocre quality of the crowd (no chicks around :( in Udaipur) and the unnecessary cost incurred in going to all the ordinary places (as we had bargained it earlier, we had no option of cutting it out) ended up with a disastrous dinner. We had thought of having 'Daal-Baati' a Rajasthani specialty. I had tasted it earlier in a hotel in Delhi, that served Rajasthani Thali. But I should say the dish that we had that day was unfogettable as I struggled to finish off the meal.
The only good outcome of the day was the shopping. The autowallah took us to a handicraft emporium where we saw sarees and kurtas made of banana silk and bamboo fibres. We purchased one each of both varieties as a momento (We dint expect any other good things to be remembered from there). Expecting the next day to be better, we resigned for the day and slept off pretty quickly.
Early morning walk around the Pichhola lake was refreshing. It brought back our trekking spirits. We were the first visitors to reach the City Palace Museum on the lake side. The museum is pretty big. It was all usual stuff and the magnanimity of Mehrangarh Fort at Jodhpur made things here very typical. We rushed off through the last few sections of the museum which were boring paintings and photographs of old kings and queens and their foreigner friends. We couldn't waste our time here and were restless to get to our final destination of the trip, Mount Abu.
A transport bus plied to Abu Road with us gladly saying goodbye to Udaipur.
Comments
Just a matter of chance that u found udaipur boring. I travel there often and never want 2 come back.Hmmm chicks might not be there still its nice and fun....may be u need to plan ur visit next time ..yaa keeping in mind u from delhi udaipur cud be a bit slow...but cant call it boring. Better luck next time.
Feroz