We said goodbye to Singhvi Haveli and loaded ourselves and our luggage into tuk tuk’s. Cars can’t make it up the narrow ‘streets’ to our guest house so, with the help of our host, we’d arranged to meet our taxi drivers at a roundabout about 5 minutes away.
We’d originally booked one vehicle but, after a day driving around in a similar vehicle in Delhi, it was obvious that us and our luggage weren’t going to fit, so we swapped for 2 small cars, 3 of us in each.
It’s 249km from Jodhpur to Udaipur but it takes almost 5 hours! The slow drive is due mainly to the condition of the road but other contributing factors are:
- Pedestrians walking down the side of the road, including the two-lane motorway, women in colourful saris carrying anything from a child in their hip to a bundle of sticks on their head.
- Cattle, either on their own or in groups, wandering along the side of the road and across the road whenever they like;
- Small villages to weave our way through;
- Local farmers walking their mob of goats along the road; and
- The odd camel carrying huge loads of looked like straw.
The car had obviously driven down these roads many times before leading to a serious lack of suspension. The driver compensated for the suspension by picking the smoothest part of the road to drive on and avoiding potholes. As a result, he spent half the time either driving on the wrong side of the road or at least straggling the centre line. The on-coming cars, trucks and motorbikes didn’t seem to worry, they just flashed their lights, tooted their horn and slowed, if necessary, to let us pass by safely.
We stopped after about an hour so our driver could get a cup of tea. He’d been up early to drive from his home in Udaipur to pick us up in Jodhpur. Where he stopped was a temple to the “Bullet God” – the Royal Enfield Bullet that is. There was a motobike in a glass enclosure and people were praying and making offerings. There’s a God for everything over here.
About 3 hours into our drive we stopped at Ranakpur Jain Temple, construction of which started in the 15th century. It was a stunning temple, like an ancient version of the Akshardham Themple that we’d visited in Delhi, but built some 500 years earlier.
From Ranakpur the road took us up into hills, similar in height to the drive to Hanmer. The road narrowed to not much more than a single lane and we had to slow each time there was oncoming traffic. There wasn’t much room for overtaking but that didn’t stop some drivers.
Udaipur “City of Lakes” is on the edge of Lake Pichola, population around 500,000, so a small town by India standards. Most of the buildings are white, including the palaces in the centre of the lake, one of which is now a NZD1,000 a night hotel.
Our hotel is not so flash but very comfortable. It sits just back from the lakeside but high enough so that the rooftop restaurant has an uninterrupted views of the lake and surrounding buildings, most of which get lit up at night.
After sitting in a car for the day we decided to have a walk around. Udaipur is definitely the most touristy place we’ve visited so far. There are shops everywhere, many of them selling the same as the other shops down the road so there’s plenty of opportunity for negotiating a good price. We realised early on that they were well versed in their sales pitch. The first question was normally “what country are you from” and as soon as we said “New Zealand”, they greeted us with Kia ora. Some even had stories about NZ, one tailor evidently has a range of clothes in a fashion show in either Wellington or Waiheke Island next week and one artist’s exhibition opens in Te Papa on 23 January! They’ve certainly done their homework about NZ although obviously don’t know just how small our country is and therefore that we know they’re full of sh*t!
We looked around the shops, got an idea of prices but didn’t buy – we have two full days in Udaipur so plenty of time to purchase.
Road trip Jodhpur to Udaipur
Sunset from the rooftop of our hotel in Udaipur
