Udaipur, City of Lakes.

There were so many expectations for our travels to Udaipur, the city of lakes nestled in the south of Rajasthan. Known as the romance capital of India, this beautiful city features 500 year-old palaces, one more prominently known as the Lake Palace, (aka where Katy Perry and Russel Brand were married, well that didn’t end well so let’s move on).

This is a place where you can spend hours walking around palace terraces, watching the lives of the locals pass by as the setting sun lights up the city with splashes of pink and gold. Deep and I spent one afternoon at the Monsoon Palace, a hilltop palatial residence which overlooks the entire “White City” of Udaipur. One kind gentleman took us on a grand tour with the finale, the settling sun over the mountain ranges. Unfortunately in India nothing is for free, so we did fork out a little for his services. As we left the palace, walking to our taxi, we both realised we had been left high and dry. The tour guide had our money and now apparently our taxi too.

We looked below at the long-winding, snake shaped road, and sighed at the thought of spending hours trying to get back down from the hilltop in the darkness. I contemplated spending the night in the dilapidated palace, though at that moment we saw head lights coming up the hill and we were saved from a night with the monkeys.

There is so much to be said about this beautiful, exquisite city but what most of my friends and family want to hear about is the root canal experience, performed in a local Indian hospital. Can I just firstly say it wasn’t a backyard dentist, performed by an old Indian man with pliers, though that would have made a great story.  No it was all performed in a very clean, local hospital. Let’s just say I was extremely scared and after four needles could still feel the procedure being done, so maybe the backyard plier story isn’t too far from the truth. After three days of going back an forth to the hospital, the root canal was finally done and I could then enjoy what Udaipur had to offer.

Unfortunately that wasn’t the end of our grief, with both Deep and I falling ill a few days later. I from the flu, Deep from the bus journey to Jaipur. One recommendation for travellers wanting to venture to India, “don’t take the sleeper bus.” Well unless you want to be tossed around and thrown literally half and metre in the air and back again. We survived the eight hour journey and live to tell the tale, though next time we will opt for the train or a plane.