Udaipur

Ok, ok, that last post was a bit sceptical, possibly a bit of venom in there even. I've now recovered from a nasty mugali, had 10 hours sleep in a reasonably clean city and India seems a whole lot better. Everyone I've spoken to agrees that the further a place is away from the main trains / buses, the nicer it is. Which is a shame, because it makes it really hard to get to. For example, we actually had a travel agent actually help us book a ticket here (I know, didn't believe it myself). We walked past a market and didn't get hassled by vendors, who weren't annoyed and angry with us for not buying their goods.

Udaipur is a city on two lakes. Its got a huge palace, a ludricously expensive 5 star hotel in the middle of the lake, a couple of impressive temples and lots of good accomodation. Its quite pleasant. Things are tailing up quite well -I'm off up to Jaipur tomorrow, and then back to Delhi Wednesday to fly out Thursday to Bangkok.

Temple of the Rats

Aparantely, there's a temple dedicated to the Rat god (one of 330 million Hindu deites) somewhere around here. Of course, you still have to take your shoes off. There are thousands of rats swarming all over the place. Its very auspicious if one runs over your foot. The luckiest thing of all - and pilgrams come miles for this - is to eat food that one of the rats has salivated on.

I don't know exactly where this temple is, and I might not try too hard to find it.