We spent our last couple of days in Rajasthan in the city of Udaipur and we have found it to be one of our most favourite places so far.  Although it has a high population of over 800k people its relatively small by Indian standards, and we found it to be more organised and cleaner than the likes of Delhi and Jaipur.  The people seemed friendly too and although the usual salesmen hassled us it was a bit more low key than elsewhere, which was nice

Although I didn’t know it until we arrived here Udaipur is also famous as the filming location for the James Bond film Octopussy and when I saw this view it seemed familiar.

To celebrate the cities role in the film Octopussy is shown at pretty much every hotel and restaurant every night!  Of course we had to watch and it was interesting to see Roger Moore doing his thing around the city.  Although they say he flies into Delhi they show him arriving by helicopter in front of the Taj Mahal, which is 300km from Delhi and then next minute he’s fighting with a big guy in a turban in Udaipur about 500km away.  Octopussy has quite a few humorous almost slapstick moments and Moore is quite old in the film, James Bond stayed at a posh hotel and went on a Rickshaw but I didn’t see him suffering the grime and bumpy buses that we have!

Its easy to see why they used Udaipur in the film, its probably the most picturesque cities in India, set around a lake (which unfortunately is rapidly drying out as the last few years monsoons have been poor apparently) in the valley of surrounding mountains its almost a bit Rio de Janeiro!  The white building in the lake is the ‘Lake View Hotel’ (home of the rich baddy woman that Bond eventually beds in the film) and is one of the worlds poshest hotels apparently.  You can’t get there on foot, only by a boat, and afternoon tea is about 20 quid, we didn’t bother as it looked a bit pompous!

We visited the cities main sights which included the Jagdish temple, which seemed nice but not dissimilar to others we have seen – yep a bit templed/forted out   The city palace was pretty spectacular though, still home to the current Maharanawe could only see a bit of it but it was one of the best palaces we have seen.  We took a  tour with a guide(who surprisingly spoke German!) and found it an interesting place.  The views across the lake and mountains were great and it must of been a pretty dominating place when it was built back in 1725.  Strangely from the outside it looks a bit like a big ocean liner.

The Fateh Sagar Lake itself is a bit dirty (this is India after all) and mosquito infested, but it does give the city a romantic feel.  The best views over the city are from the Monsoon Palace about 5km out of the city, so named as it was built high up on a mountain to avoid Monsoon floods.  Although it was only used by the royal family briefly and today its pretty derelict, which is the shame as its views are great.

The palace was also used in the film as the location for the baddy bloke and was used quite extensively in filming although it looks grander in the film than it does now.  We also went to the Sahelion Ki Bari gardens, which prove than Indians know how to keep somethings nice.  Its basically a park with lots of tropical flowers, fountains, and lotus pools a nice place to get away from the hustle of the city.  On the way back we stopped to check out the Maharana classic car collection, a bit sad I know but it was funny to see a load of Western cars in India.  Among the collection there we’re several Rolls Royces, Mercedes and even a Morris Minor!  Here’s us with a Rolls Royce Phantom 2, which as you probably guessed was used in the Bond film!

On our second day in Udaipur we spent the morning doing a cooking lesson.  We have loved the food in India (whats better than eating curry everyday!?!?)  and were keen to see how its prepared as whilst there are similarities its different to the Indian food we know at home (poppadoms, onion bhajis, tikka masala, etc don’t exist here).  Our lesson was at our teachers, Kamal, house in the city suburbs so we took a Rickshaw out there along with an English guy called Dan and a German girl called Eger who were also doing the lesson.  Although there wasn’t too much participation as we mainly watched as Kama prepared the food it was an interesting morning.  We went through preparing Veg. Pakoda (similar to Onion bhajis but smaller and with other veggies), Masala Chai (spicy milky tea), Malai Kofta (a tomato and potato based curry – really nice), Palak Paneer (Spinach and Cheese curry, they called all veg Saag here which I thought was Spinach), a Chickpea curry (forgot the name!), Alu Paranatha (potato stuffed Chapati which is fried), Chapatis, and Jeera Rice (cumin rice fried).  All were excellent and some of the best food we have had in India.  Apparently the foundation of all Indian cooking are seven important ingredients; Garam Masala, Turmeric, Salt, Cumin, Aniseed, Corriander, and Red Chilli.  We’ve purchase a few spices and are looking forward to giving it a go when we get home.

We have also been trying some chicken dishes in Udaipur and had a really great Tandoori Chicken, we’ve been eating well here!! 

Saturday morning we were up early to catch our flight to Goa, over a thousand km south on the west coast.  It was very luxurious taking a plane after the bumpy and grimey buses we have taken and it saved us loads of time too!  Although the flight was pretty pricey by European standards the service was excellent and we had some nice food on board.  We had to change in Mumbai and we surprised to see the close proximity of a shanty town to  the runway, little more than 20km away crazy!!  I will try and get a photo of it when we go back for our flight home.

So now we are in Goa, sea and endless beach, we are finally on holiday!  We got a taxi about 25km south of the airport to the quiet little village of Benaulim, we then walked about 1km along the beach to a little guesthouse called Anthy’s which is right on the beach, its great  

A little surprising to see a cow paddling in the sea, but hey this is India and cows rule!  Not much to report as we have been sunbathing and relaxing with a book.  Its the ‘off season’ because of the monsoon season and there aren’t too many tourists about, but we haven’t had rain yet and its really hot with clear blue skies, lovely   Also nice seafood here, which is caught locally (not thinking about the water quality) and tastes great – Tandoori Kingfish tonight I think.  We are here until Thursday and may go further South later in the week, but for now it’s nice to unwind and relax…

Udaipur photos here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 2:54 pm While Shep was in India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.