007

Yesterday, after getting dressed we got our first view of the beautiful city of Udaipur. Unlike Jodhpur (blue) and Jaipur (pink), Udaipur doesn't quite live up to its name of the White City, but it does feature extensive amounts of marble work. We ate a very nice restaurant, which was most regrettable as the food was mediocre at best. It's the most expensive meal we've had in India yet, and the most disappointing.

On the way from the restaurant we made friends with two Indian guys, maybe a bit older than us, and they invited us to chai. If you don't know what chai is, it is the Indian word for tea, but in India it is "masala" (the Indian word for spice) tea. Chai is a milky, spiced, and sweet hot tea. In America, it is frequently in a tea bag and tastes disgusting, but here it is delicious. They drink it all the time and consider the hot drink to actually be cooling in the summer.

They were both artists, and took us around their art school. Vocational schools in India are quite different as training last around 20 years before you can be considered a master. Both of the guys we met were seniors, which meant they had been painting over 8 years and their master had graduated them. We peeled through tons of their artwork and even bought a few pieces as gifts. In the near future I'll try and take pictures of them and post them next time I post pictures.

We talked music, politics, our respective countries, and they were very helpful. They even recommended a good restaurant to us. In India, every state is different. Each state can be as different as the North and South in the United States. Chai can differ from state to state in India, and thalis (pronounced tall-ee) are also different from state to state. In Uttar-Pradesh (the city Agra, where the Taj Mahal is) their thali was a potato and an assortment of dips and sauces. No matter where you go it seems the thali is more or less a starch like bread of potato that you dip or supplement with an array of sauces or curries. We were told in our guidebook that Udaipur has one of the best thalis in all of India and we must try it. These two guys we met also recommended it. It proved delicious. You get a big metal plate, with several small metal ramakins (sp?) each with a different thing in it, and an assortment of bread. This particular restaurant had all-you-can eat; meaning as soon as you were running low on one thing a server would run up with a cup and ladle of the stuff and fill your ramekin back up. It was delicious (well Brittany didn't care so much for it).

We woke up early this morning to go to church, only have the auto take us to the exact church we didn't want to go to (it was a Protestant church, but looked Catholic) that was on the opposite side of the map we showed him. It didn't matter as the service had just ended (it was from 8am-10am). It also turned out to be a good thing because we had forgotten to take our anti-malaria medicine the night before and had taken it this morning, which made us sick. After a good puking (for both of us), we had a drink at Cafe Coffee Day (it's like Starbucks here) and then about lunch time made our way to Savage Gardens, a restaurant everyone seems to rave about. And it was awesome. I had the fish, which was served with real mash potatoes and Brittany had a pasta with red sauce that tasted very authentic. Quite satisfying.

I seem to continually fail to mention that both Vanity Fair and Darjeeling Limited were both filmed partially in Jodhpur. The James Bond movie Octapussy was filmed here in Udaipur, and there are several restaurants that have a 7:00pm showing every night. We hope to hit it up tonight. Tomorrow night we plan on leaving for the north, but as it is a long trip we are reluctant to get on the ball.

It’s September now and I’m editing this for spelling and grammar leaving the details and writing style intact. I wanted to note that Tarsem Singh, who direct the Jennifer Lopez movie The Cell, filmed his latest movie The Fall at the Agra Red Fort (which Brittany and I saw, but never went into) and Udaipur. Many of the views of palaces and the like are places we either went to or saw every day on in our time in Udaipur. It’s hard to recommend The Cell due to its graphic nature. I have not seen all of The Fall, but what I did see was more or less tame in the area of violence, but lush and vivid in scenery. I can’t speak for the movie other than this.