The Life And Times Of Kimberly

After a few days in Mumbai we headed north to Udaipur. The journey here was not quite what we had been told it would be.

While in Mumbai we had decided to get all of the train tickets for the rest of the trip. Train tickets can be hard to get sometimes due to the numbers of people trying to travel. Through out India at most of the major cities they offer a tourist quota. Basically these are seats set aside available only to tourists. We figured that since Mumbai might be the last city before Delhi that had a tourist quota it would be good to get all the tickets. The lady helping us was rushing since we caught her right before he lunch break. The first train ride she said she couldnt get us to Udaipur but there was a station about an hour away that we could get to and then we would just need to take a bus. We figured an hour wasnt much so we went with it. She got the second one fine and then the final train into Delhi was completely booked. But since that was almost a week away we decided we could just figure it out later.

She was a little wrong about the distance from the station to Udaipur. After taking a 13 hour train from Mumbai to a place called Abu Rd we then found out that it was going to be a 5 hour bus ride to Udaipur, not quite the 1 hour ride we had thought. The bus started out fine but then it got more and more people. It would empty and then shortly after would be full again. Sean and I were fine with it for probably the first hour and a half but then we were done. Thankfully the last hour of the trip we met a guy who works in pharmaceuticals and spoke great english. We chatted with him about some India history, american politics and various other things. It helped make the time go by a lot quicker, we only wished we had met him a bit sooner in the journey.

It was pouring when we got into Udaipur which never helps when you are looking for a hotel. We told the rickshaw driver where we were staying and he tried to tell us that it was closed. This is a common trick they use to take you to another hotel where they will get a commission. Sean got upset and told them to take us there anyways, since we didnt believe them. Turns out they were actually being truthful, it made me feel a little bad that we didnt trust them. You can tell we are getting use to people trying to scam us.

Our time in Udaipur was pretty short since we hadnt planned on spending almost 6 hours on a bus. On top of that Sean was running a fever so it made more sense for him to sleep than to go to do things and risk getting worse.

We did manage to go and look at this big old palace along the river, which was nice. I am surprised by how much marble was used here. It seems that all big palaces were made of marble, maybe they are trying to be like the Taj Mahal

Other than our one outing and some short trips to restaurants we didnt do much which isnt always a bad thing.

Filed under: Uncategorized on September 16th, 2008