Udaipur - heavenSep 3, 2009
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Hi everyone! We are currently in Udaipur, our last city on our tour before we head off on our own on the train to Mumbai. Yesterday we were in Mt Abu though, Rajasthan's only hill station. It was a completely different vibe up there from what we were used to, having been in touristy desert towns lately. Mt Abu is set in the hills on a lake so it feels really tropical. The only drawback to the place is that it is a very popular Indian resort town, especially with honeymooners, thus making it strange and tacky. The hotels are pretty weird to be honest, and we found two named the Hilltone, and the Sheratone. The business students in us wondered if the real Hilton and Sheraton brands would sue if they saw that. There wasn't a ton to do in Mt Abu so we visited this museum listed in our guidebook run by this religious sect called the Brahma Kumaris. The museum part was pretty weird, full of creepy displays of blue figurines wielding knives and such. Plus it was mostly in Hindi so we had no idea what was going on. However, the best part was yet to come we discovered as we were invited to watch a laser show that was in English. So we go upstairs with our driver to this big empty room full of chairs and watch this video on how meditation helps you find balance etc etc. Then the video switched off and the real laser show began. We were told to envision ourselves as points of light (which then appeared on screen) and then God showed up as this even bigger point of light. It was kinda cool, but cool in the sense of, "this is ridiculous, who do they think they are going to convert with this cheese?" God then turned into this giant laser thing and they switched on a fog machine which scared the bejesus out of us. This probably makes very little sense right now, but essentially we are sitting by ourselves in a dark room filled with smoke with lasers being pointed at our faces. Katie said she had her eyes closed most of the time to avoid the lasers, but I actually tried to switch off the part of my brain that was laughing hysterically and focus on the light and feel the peace or whatnot. It didn't really work though and I emerged from the dark room feeling blinded and bewildered. Mainly I wondered how many people that video/laser show actually woked on. Maybe some of the hippie backpackers we've met, they would probably buy into that stuff.
Anyhoo, moving on from the cult museum, we went and visited some very lovely viewpoints, had a near death experience riding some horses, and took a boat ride that for most Indians was probably a near death experience given the shoddy boats and lack of lifejackets. (I think we seriously reassured our driver when we told him we were both lifeguards).
Today we arrived in Udaipur, which is a beautiful city on a lake. We have a great view from our hotel too. This afternoon we visited another temple, and as today is a festival day (I have no idea what festival though, it seems like everyday is a festival here. There were a lot of Ganesh statues around though) we were bombarded by crazy loud parades in the streets. We also got bright pink powder thrown at us, on the day we both chose to wear white. We weren't really mad though, as today was one of the rare days we felt like people were good naturedly attacking us in the street, vs the normal staring etc. Afterwards, we went to high tea in the City Palace, which was wonderful. Definitely one of the best meals we've had, and it wasn't even a meal really. We finished off today by having dinner on our rooftop restaurant overlooking the lake. Life seems pretty good right now.
-Jane
