Udaipur is India's "City of Lakes" and was my personal favorite stop on my trip around the country.
We took the overnight train from Jaipur which left at 11 PM and arrived around 6 AM. Purchasing a train ticket in India was a bit confusing because there are about ten different cabins to choose from, but luckily there are websites with full breakdowns of the differences. We purchased second class AC, but we would have gone with first if they weren't sold out (the difference in cost is only dollars).
Also, it's near impossible to order tickets online if you aren't located in India. I tried, but you have to make a weirdly in-depth profile (why does India Rail need to know my marital status?) and provide an Indian phone number plus credit card. I ended up asking Lewis to purchase them since he lives there.
My biggest jaw-drop moment in India was watching that train pull into the station. The lowest class cabin was up front, and people were so tightly packed in that they were pouring through the bars on the windows. There couldn't have been an inch to move in there. How anyone could handle hours of transport in those conditions is beyond me. Wild.
Our 2AC tier cabin was much better. Our side was lined with bunks (only two beds to each as opposed to the class 3 cabin which would have 3 beds stacked in a bunk) against the wall and the other had berth spaces with two bunks on each side. I took the top bunk as I had read it was safer for women to be further out of reach, and while we stored our suitcases under Lewis's bottom bunk, I kept my backpack with laptop and purse up on my bunk and slept next to them.
The bunk itself wasn't exactly comfy, but they gave us a blanket and pillow (I used my own neck pillow instead), and there was a privacy curtain. There was a bathroom at the end of the hall I used once in the middle of the night and stumbled back in the dark totally forgetting which bunk was mine. I couldn't see the numbers (you are assigned a bed) and didn't want to open a curtain on a random person, so I went back and retraced my steps counting beds until I identified my stuff on my empty top bunk. Crisis averted! Overall, I actually had the best sleep of my whole trip with the train rocking all night and was legitimately mad when Lewis opened my curtain at 6 AM to tell me we were there.
Day 6 (of overall trip) Saheliyon Ki Badi & Monsoon Palace
Upon arrival, we took an uber as close as we could get to our hotel on Lake Pichola. Udaipur is full of hills and narrow alleyways, and the entrance to Jagat Niwas Palace, where we were staying, was hidden around a corner down a pedestrian alley right next to the water.
Jagat Niwas Palace! Let me rave about this hotel! Oh my God, it was one of the most gorgeous places I've ever stayed. It was slightly out of my normal price range, but I book a lot of my accommodations through hotels.com which gives you a free night for every 10 bookings worth the average price of those stays. The fancy hotel Jackie got married at in Switzerland had brought my average up a lot higher than usual, so I was able to get one free night at Jagat Niwas and Lewis and I split the other.
The hotel was all white with an astroturf courtyard and three stories above it, the top being a rooftop complete with pool and dining tables. Every floor had little nooks with giant window seats overlooking the lake, pretty wall designs, fancy chairs or benches, plants, and a hundred other tiny details that just made it wonderful. Our room was fairly simple (one of the cheaper ones) on the same floor as the restaurant but I could have stayed at that hotel forever.
The staff was also fantastic- there were attendants all over the place, there were cookies in our room, they packed us a takeaway breakfast the morning we left, they'd bring cocktails up to you on the roof, and one of the staff actually came over to cover me with a blanket when I fell asleep on a window seat waiting to check in. There were also dancers who performed nightly down in the main courtyard.
We had a quick breakfast at a cafe down the street called La Comida. You can order giant bowls of maggi noodles (ramen) with add-ons which is what I got. After we checked into our room, we headed out sightseeing for the day, starting at Saheliyon Ki Badi, a very pretty park.
We hung out for an hour or so taking photos and enjoying the trees, flowers, and fountains.
Next up we took an uber to the entrance of the Monsoon Palace, or Sajjan Garh. The entrance fee includes a round trip jeep ride to the top of the huge hill that the palace is located on. The palace itself was alright but there wasn't much to see inside, just a few exhibits about history and local flora and fauna, but the views from up there were fantastic!
Also, and most excitingly, there were monkeys... and not only that, they were LANGURS!! The only monkeys I'd seen in the wild had been macaques and I was beside myself to run into these adorable, gangly, long-tailed creatures for the first time instead.
We sat out at the cafe next to the palace where I had a chili paneer and iced coffee, and the langurs came up to finish off our leftovers and take fries straight from my hand.
Please behold this bowl of straight up cheese that I devoured.
So that was by far the cutest part of my day. We had dinner at the hotel restaurant that evening and an early night... Again, I could live at that hotel so staying in was not an unappealing option.
Day 7 Jagdish Temple, City Palace, & Boat Ride to Jag Mandir
We hit up a rooftop restaurant around the corner called Rainbow Cafe for breakfast the next morning, and I tried poha for the first time which is flattened rice with onions, cilantro, spices, and some crunchy noodles. It was delicious.
Taking full advantage of our last day at the hotel, we then spent the entire morning absorbing the sun on the rooftop pool loungers with some cocktails. I did attempt to get in but the water was freezing, so I was happy just laying out with this ridiculously beautiful view in front of me.
I'm talking about the scenery but Lewis is alright too.
The margarita has red wine in it. Genius.
We did our sightseeing in the afternoon, starting at the Jagdish Temple just up the road. We were also pulled down an almost hidden corridor to the side and into a room where they were selling tons of paintings, one of which I bought. Udaipur actually would have been a great place to do more souvenir shopping as well if we'd been there longer. There were lots of different interesting shops and stalls along the winding roads.
Right down the street from the temple was the City Palace which I was super excited about. It took us about an hour or two to explore, and it was incredible!
Every room was different with vivid colors, painted decals and ceilings, glass detailing, courtyards, and more. Every time you turned a corner you were visually smacked in the face (like in a sexy way).
It was an absolutely fantastic place to get that shot for the gram too, if you're into social media stuff...WHICH I AM.
We then paid for the sunset boat tour which departs from a pier behind the palace. I wanted to take our hotel's boat tour which was private and sounded way fancier and more enjoyable, but they weren't operating at the moment, so we settled for donning bright orange lifejackets with a dozen strangers on a tiny motorboat.
It was still nice to see the buildings and bridges of Udaipur from the water...
...and we also unexpectedly docked at Jag Mandir, a palace in the middle of the lake popular for weddings (including some notable celebs), and were able to disembark and wander around. We explored the courtyard, watched some Indian bagpipers (yep, that's a thing), and had a Kingfisher before heading back to shore.
I looked up restaurants for dinner and we ended up at a place called Sunset View which I do not recommend at all. First of all, like half the restaurants in Udaipur have lake views, so that's not a particularly unique selling point. This place was a bare concrete platform with plastic tables, nothing else to add atmosphere, AND they took like 45 minutes to bring our food out when there was literally only one other table present.
We made up for it with a cocktail back at our much nicer hotel restaurant before getting some sleep. We were off to the airport at 7 AM to head to Goa, but this trip definitely peaked in Udaipur, and I'd recommend anyone put it at the top of their India itinerary.
I'll finish up next time with my last week in Goa and Mumbai (which are being combined because coronavirus kind of diminished the amount of content for the end of this trip).
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