Udaipur

After saying our sad goodbyes in Baroda, I set off for the last leg of my Indian adventure: an extravaganza through Udaipur, Jaipur, Delhi, Goa and Mumbai. Me and Karan got on another overnight bus to Udaipur (Rachel wasn’t feeling well, so she came on a little bit later), and an uneventful 6 hours later we were in a rickshaw on the way to our hotel. Upon our arrival to, we were greeted by a giant palace complete with sprawling lawns, several pools and just general extravagance.

Let me just say, wow, after weeks and weeks of living in Baroda, I’m living like a king. In the picture above, Karan is sitting in our room’s foyer, and yes, that’s a throne. Our bathroom is complete with a real shower, (1 and a half foot wide shower head), real toilet (toilet paper included), and all the amenities of what one could expect from a 4 star hotel in the US. The actual bed room portion of the hotel room has 15 foot painted ceilings, coffee maker, TV, and the most comfortable beds I’ve encountered in months. For ~$40 a night, it is amazing the luxury that we’ve been living in over the past couple days in Udaipur.

Udaipur itself is a much different experience than Baroda, and you can tell that the city runs off of its tourism. There are palaces on every mountaintop, and alongside the entire lake (which has several more island-palaces), touristy shops line a good portion of the roads and there is much less trash on the ground. From views that I’ve seen it reminds me more of something out of the Swiss alps than the Rajasthan countryside. After three days here, I’ve been on a boat ride, seen several palaces/museums, visited garden after garden and just generally been as much of a tourist as possible. When not doing this, me Karan and Rachel are sprawled out on our beds just generally lounging in the much needed A/C.

On the last day before we catch a night train to Jaipur, we go to Monsoon Palace on top of one of the mountains, which was one of the coolest things that we’ve done yet. It had a 360 degree view of the entire countryside which was incredible. After visiting the palace we went on a cool walk on this path which took us up another mountain to see some more of the views the area had to offer.

Hopefully, our next stop in Jaipur will be as relaxing as this one has been, because I could get used to this.