We arrived in Udaipur very early in the morning after the
stressful day we had before. Even just
going through Udaipur in a rickshaw at 6 in the morning, we already liked
it. Our hotel was amazing. It was called Nukkad Guest house and it was
lovely. It had some beautiful
decorations and the owner was really nice.
It was a shame I was still only eating dry toast because the food looked
amazing! When we finally got settled,
all I wanted to do was sleep because I still wasn’t well, so Sarah and Miriam
headed out to wander while Izzy and I stayed and slept.
The next day we were all feeling up to heading out, so we
went for a wander around the city. It’s
actually such a beautiful place. And it
had some amazing shops! As Izzy and I
sadly found. There was a lot of shopping
done over those few days. We aimed to
head out on a boat ride on the lake so we could see all the posh hotels which
were on the lake and only accessible by boat.
The hotels were gorgeous. But I
really don’t think our budget covers a £400 a night hotel… Then we headed back
into the city to look for some art lessons!
No, I did not do the art but the other three did. Udaipur is famous for miniature paintings so
there wasn’t a better place to do it. Izzy, Miriam and Sarah did some beautiful
elephant paintings that actually looked like they could have been sold in a
shop. It was really impressive what they
managed to do in an hour. I think the
guy who was doing the lesson was really confused as to why I was there but not
doing the painting, but he hasn’t seen me draw. That night, on a recommendation from the guy
at the shop, we went to see the sunset from on top of a hill. It was a long walk up and after not eating
for about 4 days, it was rather tricky!
At the top there was a tiny wee temple and we watched the sunset go down
behind the hills.
The next day was our last day in Udaipur. So we headed to the palace! It was beautiful, inside the palace were
loads of stained glass windows and the view was amazing. But, the highlight of the day was when we
went to a roof top pool! It was
amazing. Proper luxury! It also turned out that a scene from Best
Exotic Marigold Hotel was filmed there! I got to stand where Judi Dench
stood. I probably got a wee bit more
excited than I should have. We stayed in
the pool as long as humanly possible, and headed back to the hotel. By this point I was finally eating again so I
could have some plain pasta. It’s
amazing how big a role food plays in your life.
But I was also more amazed at how long you can go without food and still
be fine.
Outside the very posh lake hotel
The sunset in Udaipur
We had another full day of travelling ahead of us when we
left Udaipur to get to Jodhpur. We were
only in Jodhpur for a night so the next day was pretty busy. We managed to spend about an hour and a half
in a spice/tea shop getting given cup after cup of weird flavors of tea. We just wandered around the market for a
while and then headed to the Fort. The
fort actually looked amazing. We tried
looking for the flying fox you can do across the fort but unfortunately we
couldn’t find it, so we just sat on top
of a ledge and looked out over Jodhpur.
(I ripped my trousers climbing down..)
We managed to sit in the hotel restaurant for a few hours before we had
to get our train. The other three had an
amazing looking thali and I had some beautiful grilled cheese! It’s nice being on holiday and not having to
eat rice three times a day.
We were heading for Jaisalmer next! Right in the desert. Most people go to Jaisalmer for the camel
trekking but we were planning on heading to Bikaner for camels. We managed to get a wonderful hotel, with air
con! It was delightful.. Not sweating in my sleep is something I
really miss. I think we slept more there than in any other place. We managed to find a restaurant that did South
Indian food! Something we’ve all been
missing. We need our fix of dosa. After breakfast, we headed to the fort! I’ve
seen so many forts recently it’s unreal.
In Jaisalmer, the fort is lived in, so we could wander round all the
narrow, cobbled streets. Again though,
more shops with pretty scarves. It was
really nice to just wander round it and get lost. As we were leaving the fort, we bumped into
Charlie and Zoe, two other volunteers in India right now. Even if we only saw them briefly it was
really nice to have seen them. It still
amazes us that even though India is such a huge country, we can still bump into
people we know. After a nap that lasted
longer than it should have, we headed out for dinner to the place we had
breakfast. We ate every meal there. They did an amazing thali for 100
rupees. It was wonderful! The next day we spent wandering and sitting
in cafes when it was too hot. I really enjoyed Jaisalmer and thankfully it
didn’t get up to 50 degrees, which is what we were expecting.
After Jaisalmer, we headed to Bikaner! We arrived at about half 4 in the morning in
Bikaner. Not a fun time to arrive
somewhere. Thankfully, the hotel came to
pick us up because we were all too tired to deal with auto drivers. After another sleep, we went to have
breakfast and Tabs and Ruth arrived! It
was amazing to see them again. We didn’t
do anything else that day because, on the first of May, we were going camel
trekking!
Camel trekking is something we were all desperate to do so
when it finally came it was amazing.
Although I managed to get a particularly bumpy and uncomy camel called
Lalu. Who couldn’t really be trusted so
the camel man had to lead him the entire way.
It was amazing to walk through the desert on a camel, I felt like I was
in a film. It wasn’t a proper sand dune
desert but it was still pretty barren.
But camels are very uncomfortable, verging on painful at times! Trying to stand up the next day hurt a
lot! We rested in the middle of the day
and had some lunch. The guide prepared
us this amazing cabbage curry and chapattis, it was amazing. Although I think
he was a bit taken aback by how much we ate.
They’re used to tourist who aren’t used to the Indian diet yet but we
just devoured loads of curry. We set
off again towards our camp for the night.
Ruth’s camel decided to run on ahead for a bit by itself. The camels know they way they’re supposed to
go so Ruth’s camel just wanted to get home earlier. We finally reached our camp for the night and
took some cheesy sand dune photos.
Dinner that night was fabulous as well!
I think we all ate a lot more than we should have just because the food
was so good. Even if it was dark and we
couldn’t really see what we were eating.
That night we literally got to sleep out under the stars. We all had little camp beds and a blanket,
which was definitely needed! It started
to get rather chilly at night. It was
pretty something to be sleeping out in the desert like that. The next morning we were woken up by our
guide at 6 asking us if we wanted chai.
I think at that point all we wanted was more sleep, not chai. We packed up camp, got into the camel cart and
headed home. We were back at the hotel
for about 10 that morning.
The day felt pretty strange because we’d been up and about
for so long and actually done something.
That evening we were asked if we could help out someone with a film they
were making! So of course we said yes! We had to pretend to be tourists as the star
was a tour guide showing us about. It
was pretty fun to be honest and no we can say we’ve been in a Bollywood
film. Kind of… It may have been a
college project but people don’t need to know that. We were in Bikaner for a long time so we had
to spread out our activities! We visited
the National Camel Research centre, where they were selling camel milk ice
cream and coffee. Which of course, we
had to try. The ice cream was a little
bit weird but the coffee was good! The
next day we visited the Rat Temple! This
was something Tabs and I had been planning for so long and we were finally
going. The Rat Temple is literally what
it says on the tin. It’s a temple
infested with rats and the people who go there to worship believe that the rats
are their ancestors. Sarah, Miriam and
Izzy weren’t really a fan of it. But to
be fair, there were a lot of rats running around the floor. But I have to say I really enjoyed it. The little rats that were there were pretty
cute, unlike some of the rats we’ve seen that are bigger than cats.
Sleepy Rats
Camp for the night after the camel trek
Still on a camel in so much pain...
After four days, it was finally time to leave Bikaner! It was nice and relaxing because there wasn’t
much to see so we could just sleep and read.
It’s nice to be somewhere for longer so you can kind of recover again! We
had dinner at a restaurant near the station and it was really good! They even did dosa. However, when we arrived in Jaipur, we
discovered that is must have made us all ill.
Because all six of us have food poisoning/delhi belly. Not fun!
I thought I just got rid of mine.
We didn’t see much of Jaipur at all besides our hotel room
but on the last day there we were feeling up to going out and we went to the
Amber Fort! We were all still feeling a
bit ill and tired, so we did a wee bit of walking then a lot of sitting
recovering. The fort was pretty amazing
though. It even had a Café Coffee day
for us to recover.
