Udaipur

If you've ever seen the James Bond film Octopussy then you've seen the beautiful city of Udaipur. It has a great setting on a very large lake. There are two main attractions in Udaipur - the massive City Palace and the amazing Lake Palace. The interior of the City Palace is similar to many a palace, but the sheer size and great location of the place make it impressive as a whole. Unlike the one outside Jaipur, this Lake Palace actually had a lake surrounding it. Unfortunately we kept running into price inflation in India so even our 18 month old guidebook was hopelessly out of date when it came to prices. The reason I mention this is because to see the inside of the Lake Palace, you either have to be staying there (at least US$400 a night per room) or you can go out there for lunch. Orginally we thought the lunch was about 1,000 rupees, or about 22 USD per person. Turns out it is now 3,000 rupees per person, or about $67, so we decided to give it a miss.

The Lake Palace is the white one; City Palace is the sandstone color one.















Here's a cute advert for the store inside the City Palace.



I think we forgot to mention the Indian porters, to be found at all the train stations. I don't know if it's impressive or foolhardy, but these guys are so desperate for cash that they want the whole job to themselves, even when there's 60 kilograms of luggage to carry. This guy has 40+ kgs on his head plus another 15+ kgs on his arm!