Udaipur disappointed
me at first sight. It was too sophisticated, too touristy. It lacked that raw
charm Jaipur had. And every shop, every café, every spot were radiating one
common thing – too many foreigners came here. Well, don’t get me wrong. I have
nothing against them. They are way more well-researched and respectful towards
our heritage. You wouldn’t find any foreigner scribbling Raju loves Natasha on
any monument. We saw it even at Amer Fort. I mean I know I suck at this thing
called love but seriously I don’t get the point of declaring it to the whole
world and choosing such odd spots. I mean even after Mark Zuckerberg gave us
such an important yet full of nothing but shit platform why you still have to
put your name on a wall where people can’t even like your status. Anyway. Even though
they are more or less blameless, I still somehow dislike the tourist spots that
pre-dominantly cater to the foreign crowd. I hated Goa for the same reason. And Udaipur
has that same disease. It’s infected with something superficial straight out of
that ‘Incredible India’ campaign. Here the shopkeepers were quiet and smug. They
wouldn’t try to persuade you to come and check out their best quality stuff. He knows
the Dollars and Euros would pour in. No auto driver would try to take you to
any market around. He doesn’t give a shit. The cafés and restaurants looked
superficially cosmopolitan and the fake accent on the café owner’s mouth would
entice you to punch him in his fucking face and yell, Saale tu UP se hai. Hindi
mein baat kar.
Ever since I
had heard the bad news about Chittorgarh fort, I was in an unsettled mood. And Udaipur’s
fake cosmopolitan vibe made me more irritable. Even prolonged stares from good-looking
hotel reception guys couldn’t cheer me up fully. After sleeping
for six hours we both were refreshed. And also famished. But instead of going
to have breakfast we chose to start with a visit to Shreenath Ji. He is another
form of Lord Jagannath and apparently the resident deity of Udaipur. Every single
shop, hotel, restaurant had his portrait hanging in full glory. And he resides
at the centre of the town, inside Jagdish temple. (His main temple is in
Nathdwara, 48 kms from Udaipur.) We took the steep flight of stairs and entered
the main temple premises. Curved in stones that shows expert masonry work this
temple is almost four hundred years old. Few local women sitting inside were singing bhajan in
chorus. The priest gave us Prasad and again that heavenly smelling teeka. I
found it surprising that even though Shreenath Ji was evidently the main deity
here in Udaipur, I don’t remember spotting him much in Jaipur. This reminded me
of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. Gods and goddesses have a weird pattern
depending upon the humans who worship them.
After meeting
with Shreenath Ji we went to O’zen Café. There was no special reason why we
chose this place. It was the nearest place to the temple and it looked nice,
and we were again about to faint from starving for past eighteen hours. O’zen
had a rooftop sitting area and the view was pretty good. Again it was a
pre-dominantly foreigner infested place. One very smug looking guy was just
sitting next to us with two girls from Australia trying way too hard to impress
them. D and I were devouring our naans and butter chicken while me continuously
muttering under my breath that I wanted to kick the sonofabitch in the nuts. D
was like, but what did he do to you? Well, he did nothing; some
people just have that quality. You just feel like beating them up real nice.
After lunch
we took the left turn from Jagdish Chawk and started walking. The shops were
driving us nuts. By far, I realized Udaipur has the best collection of silver
jewellery in India. The variety of collection across the shops was mind-blowing. They even
had several designs from Amrapali. D had just quit her job and my credit card
limit was running dangerously low so we tried to turn a blind eye to the allure
and chose to go to Gangour Ghat instead and click some photos. A lady was
selling lots of costume jewellery at the ghat. We bought a few things from her
and tried to contain our shopping bug. I bought a Rajasthani maangteeka and
roamed the city wearing that for the rest of the day.
 |
| I swear I didn't disturb the pigeons. |
Of all the
lakes in Udaipur Lake Pichola and Fateh Sagar are the most popular. Both are
artificially made, created to resolve acute water shortage. Lake Pichola is
older, made in 1362. Fateh Sagar was created in the year 1687 and named after
Maharana Fateh Singh. After having done with taking a gazillion pictures at
Gangour Ghat we headed for Fateh Sagar. We skipped City Palace though. We felt
one city palace was enough for one trip. Instead, we went to Fateh Sagar and
took a boat ride. The boat was almost full and ready to leave and in hurry we
both donned our life vests wrong. Our co-passengers must have thought we were
bonkers but we were quite oblivious to our surrounding and busy enjoying the
breathtaking view. It was the time for sunset and the vista around the lake was
quite surreal. The Sajjangarh monsoon palace up above the hill was looking like
a solitary guard on alert in the ray of setting sun. We were going up there the
next day.
 |
| That jackass |
To be continued
Read the other episodes here.
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