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Other entries in Udaipur

Try the poisoned tea, it's delicious

Things that totally rock about Udaipur:

• One can walk places
• Shopkeepers take no for an answer after maybe the second or third time, which is unheard of elsewhere
• The internet place carried gum, actual sugarless Extra gum
• It also carried an array of chocolate (some of which tasted strangely fruity, but nonetheless)
• We are not the only westerners
• Shopping is cheap cheap cheap!
• Octopussy plays every night at 7 or 8pm in several hotels, since it was filmed in Udaipur
• One of my meals included honest to god vegetables, and they weren't even covered in some sort of sauce or boiled into mush

Things that don't rock about Udaipur:

• This one creepy shop guy at a place where Nichole and I bought some jewelry, who tries to get my attention every time I walk past by myself now and get me to drink tea with him -- wow, a world of no

So Nichole and I went out to the City Palace Museum the morning before she left. Actually, we just wanted to go to the City Palace, but the guy wouldn't sell us the ticket just for that, so we ended up in the Museum. It was interesting enough. And I found a Ganesh clock in their All-Ganesh-All-the-Time Store. But even paying for the Museum ticket couldn't get us into the rest of the City Palace. We needed to buy the CIty Palace Complex ticket, the one we'd tried to buy and they wouldn't let us. Racket! We skipped that part and went to spend some more money.

After she headed to the airport, I checked email and then wandered around the city down by the lake, along the ghats. Steps lead down into the water and locals gather to bathe and do laundry. The water does look very cool and inviting (especially with as warm as it's been getting lately) but I'm pretty sure the bacteria count is off the charts. I ran into a few kids, and for once they weren't asking me for pens or chocolate. Nice job, kids!

The next day I caved and got the City Palace Complex ticket in order to take the boat tour around the lake. It was nice and all, but really, all it amounted to was, y'know, riding a boat around the lake. No one pointed anything out or explained what you were looking at. They steered along the ghats, then past the Lake Palace and stopped at Jagmandir Island, also a palace of sorts. It's a bit run-down. One courtyard isn't used for anything other than storage. But a wedding was taking place so it was in the process of being decked out with lights and gauze curtains and whatall.

Once back on dry land, I stopped at a hotel on the water for lunch, since it was getting quite hot. I ordered the Pan-Seared Stuffed Chicken Breast, not knowing exactly what to expect. Did I mention it came with real non-mush, non-curry vegetables? And fries? I almost cried. Sure, it cost me 5 times what my meals usually do, but I was too busy licking the plate to care.

Sadly I can't go back every day that I'm in India. Tomorrow it's off to the airport to fly out to Pune, via Mumbai. 2 hours of planes, 6 hours of airports. I should have hired a car.

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