Leaving India

I have a few miscellaneous last pics of Udaipur and district to share, of our crew & group ....

1. View from the Jagat Newas Palace - now a restaurant (at least in part), where we had lunch after our tour of the City Palace.  The food was so so, but the views and ambiance were special.

2. Hard working donkeys making their way through the bazaar surrounding the City Palace in Udaipur.

3, 4 - the farms around the Royal Retreat, where we stayed in some style, like maharanis in holiday- may have looked a tad mediaeval, but were all really neat and well cared for.  The sight of women carrying big loads on their heads became fairly commonplace after a while.

5. I put this one in for Ian Marsh - fancy a job at the Comfert Motors??  Actually relatively flash ... most mechanics worked on the roadside servicing the thousands of motorbikes, not in any premises, comfy or otherwise.

6, 7, 8 - The Purple People Eater departs - a sad day.  Did I mention the mythical container?  Well, it would have the bus in it, and Indur the driver, and his off sider ....  One of them always seemed to be there to make sure we were safe.  By the end of the tour the Purple People Eater had definitely acquired Indian bling!! 

9. Nirav Panchal - our guide from Dasada on.  He is a member of the Ahmedabad Old City Historical Committee and his tour of the old city was fascinating.  Here, he is explaining that this is a sculpture of a grandfather and children are encouraged to sit on his lap.

10, 11 - Diwali, Festival of Lights - and our last dinner at the Royal Retreat.  We began with a few clues about one of the group members and had to work out who it was.  At this dinner we presented a package of small appropriate gifts to our partner and said good bye to some members of the group.

12. Lounge at the Royal Retreat - waiting for our taxi to the airport.  Well - note those chairs, the ones with the toothy lions head arms - they would definitely be in the container.  

The container may not exist - but I have sent home a couple of packages in advance - and one of the things to look forward to when I get home will be unpacking it all to see just what I did manage to bring home.  And as well as the tangible bits and pieces, I will be bringing home a little bit of India in my heart.  I am so pleased I started with Kachchh.  I would be way too soft to ever lead the life of the people in the rural villages and camps we visited but they are proud upright people and I can absolutely admire them and wonder at the beauty and colour that emerges from such a hard landscape.  And then again, there are the complications, and idiosyncrasies and gorgeous rich culture of India which would take more than a life time to understand ... and the food ....did I mention the food??  I was not sure what impact Kachchh would have on me, and it may take a while to pack down - but I loved it.

Hoped to send the Mandvi pics tonight but will save for a postscript.  There is the little matter of a plane to catch early in the morning!!

Udaipur City Palace

As a general rule, this visit to India has been about the crafts and culture of the ordinary rural people of Kuchchh - and both wars and splendour seem to have mainly bypassed Kachchh anyway.  Rajastan is the region for might and splendour - and Udaipur is in Rajastan.  We got our first taste of it at the Lake Palace Hotel, a former regal residence, but the City Palace in Udaipur itself was something literally to dazzle the eyes.

Construction of the palace began in 1559 for the Mewar dynasty of Maharajahs.  In recent years laws about distribution of wealth have caught up with them, as it has with aristocratic families in England.  Part of the Complex has been opened to the public as a museum, while the regal family continue to live in the remainder ... it is an absolutely huge place anyway.  The wedding of one of the current Maharajah's daughters next year is expected to be absolutely sumptuous.  

Without a shadow of a doubt, the interior decor tastes of the Mewars was not minimalist.  They knew how do put on some absolute glitz or the most extravagant prettiness.  

The building where the roof top gardens are located is actually a kind of mountain especially constructed for that purpose - there are no rooms below (see photo of some of our party).

In one courtyard of many many pillars, no two pillars are the same and I include a pic of the daffodil base for one of them.

The views out across the city and lakes are spectacular - and in fact they built Lake Pichola just for that purpose!!  It is not a natural lake.  In the view through the scalloped arched window you can see the Mewar Summer Palace, out on the water below. 

Wherever women lived in the palace, however, the open windows are replaced by carved stone grills, some of extraordinary beauty.  The courtyard with the little enclosed balcony upstairs for the queen, was one of these areas ... I didn't manage to get a good picture of the tiled 3D peacocks at ground level, now behind glass - but they were very beautiful, as was much of the detail in this courtyard.

We had a really good guide for the palace tour ... and so skillful was he that at the end of the tour, before we knew what was happening, he deposited us in the museum shop, into the hands of an equally talented Kashmiri pashmina salesman ....  by the time they had finished with us, we all came away with a pashmina or two, each one of us I'm sure, feeling every inch a maharani in the new purchase!!  It was a seamless operation - we need to work on this at the Lady Denman!!  

I have a few more pics of Udaipur to send, and a few of Mandvi - but the adventure is pretty much over.  We fly out tomorrow morning early after a lovely day at the Singapore Botanical Gardens today.  I'm a bit sad - but it will be nice not to have to repack the bags every two days.  I'd like to say I was looking forward to sleeping in my own bed but the one here in Singapore is of such superior comfort, especially the pillows, that I would like to sneak it into the mythical container and bring it home.  They have thoughtfully supplied a price list for all the furnishings in the room  - but I couldn't even squeak in a pillow case!

Ahmedabad to Udaipur, City of Lakes

On 3rd of November set out from Ahmedabad for our only stop outside Gujarat (apart from Mumbai for landing and take-off) - the beautiful lake city of Udaipur.  

But before we leave Ahmedabad Leslie would like me to share with you the interesting list of rules in the lift at the Hotel Cama, noting Item number five.

 And I don't think Leslie mentioned several exciting (read hair raising!!) tuk tuk rides through the Ahmedabad traffic ... although just crossing the road was more or less the same.  The trick, as someone explained to me, was to think like a cow!!  Its a Hindu country after all - so in impossible situations ... when you are crossing a packed honking road to spin a U-ie, or travelling the wrong way against the traffic for more convenient access to the hotel entry - the traffic does, just magically part, greased by a great deal of honking.  Our bus had a very fancy horn tune, with alternative sharper bursts.  In the hurley burley of city traffic, that seemed useful.  Going down a narrow country lane, when employed against an elderly gent peacefully riding his bicycle, or a lady carrying her water supply on her head, it seemed a but much!!

Enroute to Ahmedabad we stopped for a snack at a fancy Indian roadside cafe, where the manager eyed us off very suspiciously -  or at least we didn't mange to raise a smile.  I couldn't resist something called "chowpati kulfi" ... which was actually a very pleasant milky ice cream on a stick.

Our accommodation, just outside Udaipur at the Royal Retreat was by far the most luxurious of our stay - after all, we were now in Rajastan, state of the Maharajahs.  Although relatively new, the buildings were finished with antique building materials, and everywhere, including guest rooms, were lavishly furnished with the most amazing antiques from the Raj.  Bewildered for choice for interesting detail pics I thought the toothy lion won the cuteness stakes.

On our first afternoon we and our bus went into central Udaipur for our first sight of Lake Pichola and a boat ride across to the Lake Palace Hotel ... lovely views back to Udaipur palaces on shore, across the lake to the beautiful Lake Palace Hotel and into the hills as the sun set - but Leslie's camera also caught the Savage Garden Cafe!  

We were greeted at the Lake Palace Hotel by phalanx of life sized marble elephants - which magically by the time we left had acquired striking red and white vestments.  The views across the lake on our return were as magical as the ones going over.  Udaipur really is a very beautiful city ... It is also a tourist mecca and, as far as I could discern, a desirable holiday haven for India's own well to do.  Some of the local housing looked seriously expensive.

More on Udaipur tomorrow.  We visited the City Palace Museum, home to the Mewar rulers from the 16th century, which was not minimalist in its decor ... we celebrated Diwali, the festival of lights, on our last night, the local farms were a picture of medieval neatness, so there is more to tell.

Ahmedabad Old City and more ...

Well, I bet you thought Leslie had run away. I'm still here and in fact although we are writing about Ahmedabad, we are safely in Singapore, having arrived this morning.

The first morning in Ahmedabad we visited the Calico Museum, a very hard place to get into, with bookings needing to be made ages in advance. No piccys were allowed and although we were marched through there fairly smartly to enable us to see everything on view in the time allocated, most of us agreed it was one of the highlights of the trip

First piccy is the view from our hotel room of the Sarbamati River. A huge wall has cut the river off from being viewed at street level by the general populace. The government has decreed that there will be a sort of promenade, but who wants that separated from  the rest of the world? The Hotel Cama there was a lovely old place which was home for 3 nights.

Morning of 2 November saw us walking through the old town with our guide Nirav Panchal. He has a great knowledge of the heritage of the old town as it is his home town and a particular interest of his. You can see his office in high up in part of the old wall. We also saw that goats lived amongst the people there as well as pigeons catered for in a coop like an artificial tree.

Robyn loves her doorways, and we saw a variety of those. She managed to show up the rest of us when she took on the ironing with a huge old iron filled with charcoal, help;ing out a woman in a Muslim part of town.

In many of the towns we saw little squirrels, and Ahmedabad was no exception. We also saw angels as well as other decorations on the houses.  Then, as usual, we sussed out the markets. Spices, seeds and dried fruits abounded along with goats ready for a ride.

Last place on the heritage walk was the  early 15th Century Friday Mosque which was being swept with a broom made from the tail feathers of a peacock.  Again, beautifully carved decorations as well as wonderfully incised stone screens.

As the market is so central to life, we always had to walk through part of it to get to anywhere else, at least that's our excuse. We stopped to admire some very glitzy work and were told it was part of a bridal outfit, and the owner insisted dressing me up in it, much to the high amusement of the other stall holders, and the group.

Another goat later, we were waiting for the shop of Gamthi Wala to open. Inside there were beautiful fabrics many of which were block printed on a fine cotton. Jill and I know what was the most beautiful thing in the shop.

Later that afternoon we visited Ghandi's ashram. It was moving to see the sparseness of his living quarters, his spinning wheel and his few possessions. This made me reflect somewhat on the possessions we had been gathering over our journey. A gentleman was demonstrating spinning cotton with one of the travelling spinning wheels Ghandi used. It folded up into a small box, just the right size for her to purchase, Robyn thought. Unfortunately for her, she never found one. However, she did buy some khadi cloth, the sort Ghandi had woven from his spun cotton.

One evening while in Ahmedabad we were privileged to see a performance of a play (in English, lucky us) that was part of the first Ahmedabad Festival of Arts. The amphitheatre was in part of a private home. How gracious of the family to share their love of the arts with the folk of the city.