Photo of the day: old Jain temple at Nagda, near Udaipur
We set the alarm for 6.15 in order to be up for sunrise – as predicted the temples started chanting, singing and drumming rather before that! As it got light, the shapes of the ghats became clear: they looked very quiet with a few people around, and cows taking a walk around the lake also. Then I went back to sleep...
By the time we left it was a bright and warm day, getting hotter as we headed south and west. We weren't in the desert yet: the monsoon still comes to eastern Rajasthan, but the land seemed to become more arid and a little more barren as we drove through various small towns and over a few hills. There were a lot of marble works and we saw piles of large slices of marble, with different patterns and colours. They are used in temples and floors of houses.
After a hair-raising six hours with the kind of driving that makes the news headlines back at home (“road users shrieked aghast as a madman careered along the wrong side of the highway, double overtaking a car and a truck while avoiding a cow and an oncoming truck”) we came near Udaipur and drove to a small collection of old temples in the countryside. Dating from the early 11th century and almost deserted now but still well kept, they were the first Jain temples we saw. The temples which were lying partly submerged in water among lotus flowers were particularly beautiful, with their reflections in the water and with wading birds foraging around.
The centre of Udaipur has some really narrow steep roads: our hotel was again in the centre around where the tourists seem to hang out. When we got to the hotel we went up to the rooftop terrace and were amazed by the view – we were looking out over a lake which contained two islands – one of which had a huge pavilion on, the other with the “floating” hotel made famous in the James Bond movie Octopussy. We abandoned our plans to go out for a walk and instead spent the evening on the rooftop terrace watching the sunset as the lights came on on the famous island and temples, with egrets flying overhead and (I think) both Mercury and Venus both shining brightly in the twilight sky.
For dinner I had a vegetable biryani but asked for extra egg (money no object), which seemed to surprise the waiter. Clearly they haven't imported every recipe from the Indian restaurants at home. Or maybe it's a strange recipe – like putting marmalade on pasta or something.
And the rest of the evening I spent recovering from the shock of the Doctor looking at me and gasping in horror, so that I ran out of the bathroom in panic. I thought that I had a scorpion hanging from my shirt or something! In fact it was just that I had accidentally dipped my towel in the toilet...
(another hotel name check – the Mewar Haveli in Udaipur: small and relaxed with a great location...)
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