(I simply came to use the Internet and the “Evil tailor” opposite lured me into his shop again. Walked out 10 minutes later with another new pair of pants, at the discount rate of RS200 – Just for me!!! He knows I’m leaving tomorrow so I will have to take a detour so as not to to be suckered in again! I must say my latest purchase is my best ever…clearly, my taste is improving as I type;-)

So today I visited a place called Ranakpur. It’s a 3-hour local bus journey there and 3 hours back. My plan was to wake up at the crack of dawn and head out there for the whole day. My plan failed horribly due to the fact that I completely slept through both alarms and only crawled out of bed at 9.30am (Shocking I know!) In my defence I blame the dog seance that took place right outside my window last night. It was awful….it literally sounded like every single animal that was living in Udaipur decided to get together and protest!

(Needless to say, I didn’t have time for breakfast and quickly made my way down to the local bus station….all was not lost as I would catch the bus at 11, be there by one and could have at least 2 hours to look around before I headed back.)

Everything was going well as I climbed on the most dilapidated bus ever at 11.30. Sitting right at the back of the bus was another lone-traveller, (Imagine my excitement! Whoop Whoop!!!) That is, of course, until I realized that he was one of those before mentioned “not so friendly travellers” that had absolutely no intention of having any sort of conversation with me other than telling me he was French!

So content to sit by myself in silence for the next 3 hours ( I can do it, you know!) we set off. We had been travelling, mmmmmmmmm about 9 minutes when our lovely bus got a flat. Great! We all sat there for a while and then I stumbled out of the bus to try and figure out what the next plan of action was going to be? All the men were just standing around…. so ‘What now? We wait? We change tire? No one seemed to be able to tell me anything other than “flat!” “flat!”, (that much I had already figured out) All of a sudden another bus came over the hill and the new plan became very clear, RUUUUN!!! There was a massive stampede of people as everyone filtered off the broken down bus and onto the new bus. Luckily for me, my long, agile legs came in handy and I managed to get a seat in the new and mildly more comfortable bus. Was sitting there feeling rather proud of myself when I noticed my poor French traveller friend hadn’t been able to get a seat. I couldn’t help but think: “Now dude…had you been friendly I would have automatically remembered to save you a seat, but alas in the manic scramble for seats, I completely forgot about YOU! And herein lies the almighty the lesson: “Always be friendly because you never know who might keep you a seat on the bus!” I sincerely hoped that the poor man wasn’t going to be standing for the next 3 bumpy hours!!! But I suspected he would. Aint karma a bitch! 😉 

Ok so we finally arrived at Ranakpur and I was planning on having a bite to eat and then going to look at the temples ( I was by this time starving) ….needless to say Ranakpur IS the temple and a seedy looking cafe selling sweets, cool drink and chewing tobacco…that’s it! So no breakfast or lunch…I had to buy a packet of Bonbons to keep me going (they probably would have too, if the mad security guard-women hadn’t confiscated them from me before I entered the temple! She didn’t seem to care that I had missed breakfast that morning!)

The temple was definitely one of the most beautiful works of craftsmanship I have ever seen. The entire temple is carved from white-milked marble and consist of 29 halls, supported by 1444 pillars, all intricately carved, not a single pillar is the same.
It truly was worth the 6-hour trek to see.

And so I spent in total about an hour looking around and decided to head back. While waiting for my bus at the seedy cafe I literally bumped into the scariest, most demented baboon/monkey-like thing, just sitting there with his family. Got the absolute fright of my life….while various people warned me: “very dangerous, very dangerous!” (I needed no such warnings.)
So I bought my 7up and headed over to the oooooooooother side of the road, as far away from ‘it’ as possible. I was sitting looking at my photo’s when I suddenly saw this deranged animal bee-lining straight for me. Being the big girl that I am, I screamed, jumped up and ran and hid behind some poor Indian man that was standing there…(God only knows how I expected him to save me?;-) But as it so happened the frightful animal had no interest in a tall, gangly white person…and had simply wanted my 7 up – which I had left on the road. He then proceeded to pick it up, smash it 4 times, until it broke and then drank MY drink with his entire family! I did at this point manage to get some good photo’s so I guess it was RS25 well spent!;-)

On the bus trip back I sat at the back of the bus near to what I can only describe as quite a scary looking man that kept on staring at me. I was busy minding my own business, once again, looking at my photo’s from the day when he suddenly scootched up the 6 seats between us and literally put his head over my shoulder to see the photos. (Bless, some people truly are bewildered by a camera) I showed him all the pictures from the temple and he showed me the most beautiful, half-toothed smile which made him look a lot less scary looking!

I asked him If I could take his picture, but like so many other people I have tried to photograph…as soon as the camera is up the smile disappears. I tried a couple of times to get him to smile but to no avail. So I had to settle for a rather sombre looking photo and the smile for myself!

I realize that in my last blog I described Udaipur quite “quaintly”, but after heading out today I realize that the part I am staying in is the old part of the city, now catering mostly at tourists. The rest of Udaipur is very similar to Mumbai, just a lot less manic and way smaller! Am WELL proud that I managed to survive my first route of public transport in India all by myself!!!

And so I headed back home, had a shower and went to go visit my new friends Raj and Yogi! …..oh and I wrote a couple of postcards….so if you gave me your address you should be receiving soon!! And thus ends another lovely day in Udaipur, I think I will be a bit heart-sore to have to leave here tomorrow.