Udaipur

After Jodhpur it was another 8 hour local bus ride to Udaipur. I thought we had arrived when the driver crushed my dreams and told me we were halfway. We had only stopped for drinks and the toilet.

We also spent a long time driving up through the mountains in first gear in a bus with thousands of people crammed on. This took as long as you'd imagine if not longer.

The hotel was less good in Udaipur. Mine and Shags room was filthy so we spent the whole time in Soph and Becca's room. We had a great meal at a beautiful lakeside restaurant in the evening where there were massive bats flying overhead. I mean seriously big. I've seen bats, I've been to a few zoo's in my time but these were bigger than batman himself. It was still eautiful there though. We had a view over to where they filmed Octopussy.

Coincidentally a random Indian man called Sophie Octopussy. It may have been due to her massive hair. We found it a bit funny. In fact we've had a few names in Udaipur. A beggar woman called Becca a witch because she refused to give her loads of money. A random kid called Shahreena a bastard in Hindi. Out of a car window. And some local kids called me the dancing guy cos I randomly got pulled into wedding procession in he street so naturally me and Becca joined in and danced our troubles away, it was great. Indian people seem to love it when Westerners do stuff!

In Udiapur most of the lakes were pretty dry in this season, which was a bit of a letdown for the 'city of lakes'. But we saw the beautiful city palace museum. And had some great fun learning to haggle and barter in the markets. I got a cool Ganesh T-shirt for 100 Rupees, down from nearly 200. I had to pretend to walk away quite a bit but it was worth it! A T-shirt for about a quid!