Octopussy

Well I survived Mumbai and made it in one piece to Udaipur (though my back felt like a jigsaw after the train journey..).  What a wonderful place.  I know ‘wonderful’ is a bit of a middle aged woman word but it seems to be the one that fits.  But let me go back a bit...

As we pulled out of Mumbai Central we caught a glimpse of the lives and living conditions of some of the slums.  We hadn’t been brave enough to do one of the ‘slum tours’ or venture out on our own.  It’s a tricky balance between feeling the need to face the harsh reality of the conditions so many people live in, and at the same time wanting to avoid the slight element of voyeurism and exploitation in paying see people living in miserable conditions.  Perhaps doing some kind of volunteering is the only way to assuage one’s guilt?  That will be for the second part of the trip. 

The train itself was an experience, since we took ordinary seats and not a sleeper train for the day time bit of the journey.  It was already relatively packed by the time we all settled into our tight-squeeze ‘seats’ at the station, and I was quite alarmed to see how many more people continued to push and shove to get on at each subsequent station.  There were dozens of people standing in the aisles, literally for hours, so we counted ourselves pretty lucky with our economical if somewhat rigid seating.  The train journey was about eight hours to Ahmedabad and I had some interesting chats with people.  I must say that since I’ve been here I’ve had some very kind and genuine exchanges of smiles with people.  Little snippets of niceness.  And people are very interested and chat to you.  This is something I'm not really used to, having spent a considerable portion of my life in Brussels, where people do in fact stare at you in equal measure but the difference is that it’s usually not with the same amount of benevolence.  So we finally arrived in Ahmedabad and waited an hour, then got our night train all the way to Udaipur.  I actually survived the experience of the bunk bed and tiny cabin scenario and I’m quite proud, but this time we were in pretty decent conditions (it’s all relative) and I fear for my mental health if I have to sleep in one of those three tier things…  We shall see.  So we arrived in Udaipur, Rajastan, know as ‘The White City’ at about eight in the morning, dishevelled and disoriented.  And despite the noticeable heat, it was some how much more bearable than Mumbai.  We got a little tuk tuk to our hostel, the Nukkad guesthouse.  It’s a beautiful family-run guest house over several levels, with a polished marble open air staircase cut out in the centre of the house and towering up four floors.  {I fell down an entire flight of stairs on the first morning and still have a shiner the colour and size of an aubergine on my left buttock}  On the top floor there’s a beautiful roof top terrace with view over lake, decorated in the famous Rajastani hand painted detailed flowers and patters, and with a nice big long table where all the other guests come and hang out at various parts of the day.  We’ve met some nice people: two English girls, a Swiss girl, two Canadians; and we’ve just sort of been hanging out and visiting things together.  We’ve also had some nice chats with the owner of the place, Raju, who is slowly expanding his empire and plans to open a second guest house.  The original house (where we are) has been in their family for about four generations and about twenty years ago he turned the family home into a guest house . 

So on the first day we all headed out to visit the City Palace, an impressive Maharaja Palace (or actually I think it’s even a rank above that.. Maharana or something like that..) which is a labyrinthine structure which comprises no less than eleven palaces all constructed and added to little by little by consecutive Maharajas from about the 1500s until the end of the Raj.  Mad stuff.  My favourite was the Garden Palace, a leafy little marble haven up at a great height, that you reach from a tiny corridor and flight of stairs.  From the palace you can see the Palace hotel, where the James Bond film Octopussy was filmed.  Infact, last night we finally got around to going to one of the roof top restaurants where they hiked up three flours with a big telly and screened the film for us while we ate some lovely dinner.  The film was shot in 1981 and caused quite a rukus.  Apparently the tuk tuks were brought in especially for the film and have been a part of the city ever since.