Udaipur

Udaipur is one of the places I knew I wanted to definitely visit my second time around. I had heard many good things about the city and it lived up to all expectations! The flight out was on a much smaller plane than I expected. I sat next to this 9 year old girl that was very friendly. She was just as curious about me and what I was doing as I was about her. She was flying all by herself and seemed like a pro. She was going to visit her grandparents that lived in Udaipur. It kind of reminded me of when I was younger and my sisters and I would go to visit my grandparents in Oklahoma by ourselves!

My friend on the flight to Udaipur. She spoke very good English. I had read somewhere that most kids don't take English until they are in secondary school. This girl went to some type of private school. She told me they didn't learn from books but rather were assigned projects. They had to go out and do the research and report back. She currently was working on a project about food where she went out to villages and met with farmers.


This was the door guy at the Taj Lake Palace. He ended up taking us to the airport on Monday. The Taj car was going to be 899 rupees and we knew we could get it for less than half that so we asked him to get us a cab. Instead he said he'd drive us personally for 300 rupees. He looked a little strange out of the normal get-up with his mustache, but he was a really nice guy. When he picked us up he had someone else driving the car and he just went along with us. In the end I think it was a way for him to make a little money on the side and get a free ride to the airport to meet with some contacts. After he dropped us off we saw him waving at a bunch of people and then shaking hands with a lot of cops in and out of the airport.


The Taj Lake Palace - our hotel - was a former summer palace that is in the middle of Lake Pichola. Every time we wanted to go to or leave our hotel we had to take a boat. This is one of the drivers that we had several times.


Kristin and I with the City Palace in the background.


Above is our hotel. It is a 250 year old marble palace.


Our room was very, very nice!


View from our room! We had a great view of the City Palace.


Courtyard just outside of our room. Some scenes from the James Bond movie Octopussy were filmed in this courtyard.


More views of the hotel.


Pool at the hotel.


Sunset in Udaipur!


Another view of the sunset. On the top of the hill you see Monsoon Palace. It was one of my favorite places in Udaipur. It had some amazing views that you will see below.


The rooftop restaurant where we watched the sunset.


View of City Palace at night from where we ate dinner.


View of Udaipur from City Palace.


Inside City Palace. You can see some of the beautiful Mosaics that are throughout this palace.


Outside view of City Palace. Built in granite and marble and surrounded by crenellated fort walls, the largest palace complex in Rajasthan stands on a crest overlooking the Pichola Lake.


Cute money on the road to the main shopping area!


Our rickshaw driver for the weekend! You can't really tell from this picture - but I've never seen this much hair coming out of a mans ear!! :o) Very nice guy!


Outside of Monsoon Palace. The palace was not kept up very well but the views from the palace where amazing. When I win the lottery I want to buy the property and fix the place up!!


View of Udaipur from Monsoon Palace. If you look in the middle, left of the picture you can see our hotel in the lake.


Another view from the palace.


This is as close as I'm going to get to spotting leopards in the wild!! :o)