City of Lakes

City Palace, Udaipur, India
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Nik and I headed off to a French bakery, a change from the German bakeries we had been to.  It was not too far from the guesthouse and the food wasn't bad, but the location was a little noisy with the morning traffic rushing by and lots of honking.  Once done, we took off to the City Palace where like the fort in Jodhpur, we were able to get an audio tour.  Given that the prices were so high for taking in a camera, we ended up only taking one.

The audio tour was pretty good, probably not as good as in Jodhpur, but definitely worth getting.  The palace was really nice with lots of buildings and rooms to go through with it probably taking us about two hours to complete the tour.  We headed out and got almost back to the guesthouse when I realized I had left my camera at security - doh!

City Palace, Udaipur, India
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Near our guesthouse, I had seen a shrine that I was quite amused by because the god looked like a big pile of tinfoil with googly eyes.  One of the shopkeepers near by saw my amusement and explained that the god was for the mountain.

We headed for lunch and then decided to walk to see about going to the Lake Palace, which as its name suggests, sits in the middle of the lake. Now the palace had been converted into a very expensive hotel and Nik and I thought about heading over for a drink to check it out.  But it just didn't seem worth getting the boat over and then paying for a really expensive drink.  There was also a possibility of going to another island in the middle of the lake, but that didn't look too appealing either!

Nik, City Palace, Udaipur, India
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From by the lake, we decided to head over to Reliance World to try and use up some of our rupees.  It was quite a distance in the rickshaw and once there, we found out it was closed because it was Sunday - oops!  We got into another rickshaw and headed back to our guesthouse, disappointed that the place was closed, but still happy that we got to see other parts of Udaipur that were not touristy at all.

That evening, Nik and I decided to check out some traditional dancing at Bagore Ki Haveli (which also has the worlds largest turban which unfortunately we didn't get to see :( ).  The performance was an hour long with 7 dances to traditional Indian music.  The first dance was the rain dance which had a woman and a guy dressed up as a peacock.  The second dance had two women dancing and spinning around with pots of fire on their heads.  It made me nervous just watching them!  The third dance were two women that had symbols all over their body which they tapped with other symbols on their hands.  It was really very impressive how in time they were to the music.

City Palace, Udaipur, India
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The fourth event was not a dance, but a puppet show.  First the puppeteer had a woman puppet in a sari that he had dance provocatively.   Then he had a man puppet that he had dancing and juggling his head.  It was very amusing and I think it was Nik's favorite part.  The fifth dance was a local dance performed by four women.

The sixth dance was in my mind the most impressive.  A woman danced around with one pot on her head.  Then she stopped and another pot was placed on her head after which she danced and twirled around.  Then to make it more challenging, a scarf was placed over a vase and with the pots still on her head, she laid down and pulled the scarf off the vase with her teeth without knocking the vase over.  If that wasn't enough, she stopped and another pot was put on her head.  This time the challenge was to stand on a rimmed metal plate and dance on it, moving around in circles as she banged it against the floor.  Next she was up to 6 pots (each pot getting progressively smaller) and her task this time was to dance on broken glass that had been poured onto a mat - ouch!  The finale came when the woman had 10 pots on her head, here she had no task except to dance and twirl around which in itself was quite a feat!

City Palace, Udaipur, India
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The final dance was the same woman that had the pots on her head (I can only imagine how exhausted she was) that danced around with moves that were quite incredible.  Overall, I really enjoyed all the dancing and really glad we didn't miss out on it.

Not really too inspired about finding a new place for dinner, we headed back to the Savage Garden and had some excellent Italian food.  Both Nik and I by this point were a little Indian fooded out.

N.B.  We took Nik's camera into the City Palace and I won't have pictures to put up until I see him in a week and half or so.