Udaipur, the most romantic city in India, or the Venice of the East as it is sometimes called, is a beautiful and peaceful town in the midst of Rajasthan. Both of the nicknames describes the place pretty well, with the white, seemingly floating Lake Palace and the magnificent City Palace providing a background setting that appears taken straight from a fairytale. The town has a faded, shabby chic charm, with numerous heritage hostels in old carved buildings. Udaipur’s claim to fame is that three of its palaces were used in the James Bond movie, Ocopussy, and many guesthouses play the movie on their rooftops on a nightly basis. It is definitely the most laid-back town that I have been to in India so far, and the lake has a very unique tranquil feel to it, almost meditative. I splurged a bit and checked into a lovely guesthouse with a marvelous lake-facing view. Each morning I got up early and watched the sun rise over the lake and observing local families doing their morning routines and laundry by the lakeside.
The first morning I met an older American lady who also was travelling alone. We decided to share a taxi to go sightseeing. While looking for a taxi we were approached by a very entertaining Indian fellow, Amu. He told us he was an Auyruveda massage therapist and wanted to make a quick diagnose of us in his little shop across the street, for free. We were primarily laughing at him and were on our way to decline, when Amu tilted his head and said “why not?!”. We were really in no rush, so we looked at each other, laughed and said “OK, why not!”. This phrase later became the theme of the day - a day that evolved into quite a little adventure. One of those adventures that seem to happen quite frequently in this country called India.
After the random, but surprisingly accurate Auyruvedic diagnose, Amu declared that he liked us and offered to be our personal tour guide for the day, just for fun. “Why not?!”. He proved to be an excellent guide and took us to see two other lakes, provided us with freshly squeezed sugar cane juice off of the side of the road (yum!), sing-along to Bollywood soundtracks in the car and a masala dosa lunch at a VERY local joint. It was day full of laughter as Amu proved to be completely nuts combined with a relentless positive attitude to life. His motto in life is:
“Life is like ice cream, you have to eat it before it melts!”
Driving back to town we saw some pretty interesting road signs:
“Silence – an affair with nature”. How brilliant!
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