Tuesday, April 5, 2011

udaipur

We flew from Jodphur to Udaipur.  The in-country flight was a short one, but it was delayed for about 2 hours.  Luckily it was an amazing airport...not really.  Anyways, our time here actually fell on Christmas, so we planned ahead and put in an extra day in order to have Christmas free.  After all, who wants to be traveling or rushing around on Christmas? Instead, we enjoyed Christmas this year by relaxing and taking a lovely boat ride around Lake Pichola.  It was a wonderful day...not that Christmassy, but still wonderful!

As a side note, this was actually my first Christmas away from my family, so it was a bit odd.  To be honest, it felt really bizarre and I did end up feeling bad about not being with my family.  It didn't feel like Christmas as we were away from family, the food, and of course all of the decorations and music.  Thankfully I had Matt and we managed to still have a fantastic Christmas together.

One highlight was that we had some of the best Indian food in Udaipur.  Just thinking about it makes me hungry....YUM! Since the food was so good, we kept going back and gosh it was really delicious.  Another cool thing we fell upon during our time there was the Shilpgram Festival which was full of local crafts and performances and the coolest ferris wheel ever!  An image of the ferris wheel can be found in my India post.  It had me laughing for the longest time.  This ferris wheel had no motor and went round via the man standing in the middle of it.  Brilliant.  

City Palace, a view from our boat ride around Lake Pichola.

Inside the complex

Posers!

Jagdish Temple

 
There were very ornate carvings on this temple.

Shilpgram Festival...sadly we did not go on a camel ride.

Some of the performers...we did not ever find out why the men were dressing up like the women.

The Lake Palace and The City Palace

The Lake Palace...the location for one of the 007 movies.

Jagminder Island...it is in the middle of Lake Pichola.

A self-portrait on our boat trip on Lake Pichola on Christmas Day!

Image of the city from our lovely restaurant.

Daily washing

If you are looking for a spouse, matrimonials is the way to go! This was one of the sections found in the newspaper.  Individuals or families both can write ads for spouses and they actually were really specific including preferences for skin color, occupation, and caste!

3 comments:

  1. It looks like such a beautiful trip! It is odd though to have Christmas away from your family, and I suppose it was just the 2 of you. Last year in Thailand was my first Christmas away from home, but having all of my in-law family around helped!

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  2. What are the matrimonials? Like want ads for spouses?

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  3. Susan - Thanks Susan! It was a truly beautiful trip. I agree, the reason Christmas felt so weird this year did have to do with it just being Matt and I. Also being away from home and just in a hotel made things a whole less Christmassy. That said, it was still a wonderful time. :)

    Ambre - That is totally what it is! It was a section in the paper full of ads for spouses. The funniest thing ever! There were sections that the individuals took out the ads and then there were parts where the parents took out the ads for their kids. The thing about it was that they were specific...even as far as which caste they were looking for, skin color, and occupation!

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