Some Peace and Quiet...and then the Taj!

We decided to keep heading south to visit a smaller city, Udaipur. Again, getting there was an experience. We took a 10-hour overnight sleeper bus. The sleeper "bed" was an area above the seats. We pushed down the dirty blankets, wiped it with toilet paper, then wiped it again with hand sanitizer, and finally used papers and a magazine on the pillow area. There wasn't much sleep that night.

But the three days we spent in Udaipur were great. The city is small, compact, and on a lake. The best part is that unlike the last 2 places we've been, it's far cleaner and has hardly any traffic. The city is made up of narrow alleys and we can walk basically everywhere.  It's built on 2 sides of Lake Pichola, a man-made lake with 2 beautiful palaces in the middle.  The views from the many roof-top restaurants are incredible. 

We were able to relax, visiting the bazaars (shops) and the City Palace. The Raj (king) family still lives there and we saw the prince a couple times (always on his cell phone) and the king as he left the palace for a parade. We also had some great times getting out of the tourist areas.

We were also here during a 9-night festival, which was very fun. The nights are filled with dancing, music, and performances.  The last night's dance was huge: it filled the length of a main street with 2 circles of dancers.  The women rotated around the inside and men around the outside, all hitting sticks together on the same beats.  On the last day, we saw truckloads of people with statues of the gods and covered in colored powder sing and yell their way to the lake.  There they take the gods to the water and dump them, sometimes off a boat.  Everyone is extremely happy and there's a lot of celebrating with dancing and banging drums and firecrackers. I loved this!

One of the many parades through the streets

 

On the overnight train to Agra...check out my backpack: that's holding 6 months of stuff!

Our next stop was Agra where the Taj Mahal is.  After seeing pictures of this beautiful building all my life it was really amazing to see it in person.  It is even more beautiful than it is in the pictures.  Even though it was SUPER hot we really liked spending time walking around and just staring at it!  We also saw it at sunset from across a river and that was beautiful too.

We continue to take in the sights and sounds and adjust to life on the road.  There are obviously some things that don't work out according to plan but usually it turns out fine.  It's also great to have so much flexibility--Udaipur being a great example of that.