Love Letter to Udaipur
Udaipur (pronounced Odepur) is a place I remember vividly. Experienced travellers often say it’s down to chance whether you meet someone interesting to hang out with. I felt we were very lucky with Polo, Omer's buddy who ran the lovely hotel we stayed at in Jaisalmer. Our first evening in Udaipur we saw some great things, but I was worrying that we wouldn't be as lucky with our interactions with the locals as we moved on to new places. My worries turned out to be unfound.
The morning after we had arrived in Udaipur, Boye and I felt well rested and ready to find out what this place had to offer. We started the day with some sightseeing at the city palace museum, someone had recommended this museum to us. The museum had many interesting exhibitions to offer, and the historian in me was as always excited by this, but I noticed Boye was getting a little bit bored of seeing one palace fort after the other.
The streets of Udaipur are quite different from those of Jodhpur. The dominating blue colours of Jodhpur have been replaced with a facade cover as white as snow. The summer palace placed in the middle of the lake Pichola is the building that stands out more than any other in my memory of the city. We could not afford to visit the palace hotel, but we would rather see the palace fort on the mainland anyhow.
We ate a tasty bowl of fried rice with some slices of chicken (or hen really), and a tasty broth. One of the best pieces of advice I got in India to avoid Delhi belly, is that it’s safer to eat heated streetfood, where you can actually see that they heat the food properly, rather than going to a mediocre restaurant where you have no clue what they might be doing inside their hidden kitchen. More expensive restaurants however hold a standard closer to what we would expect in Norway.
Boye and I had just finished eating and started walking up towards the famous Jagdhis Temple, when we stumbled upon a large mass of people making lots of noise and playing different instruments. As it happened this was the day of a popular Hindu festival described by the locals as “the women's festival”. A procession of women dressed in traditional Marwari (Rajasthani) dresses moved past the large Jagdish temple, and were headed towards the waterfront. Some teenage boys were playing their drums, and the decorated women were at times singing beautiful songs. As the women’s procession finished moving past the Jagdish temple people started to follow the procession, and Boye and I joined in with the crowd. Men and also a few women were watching the whole thing from the sideline. Cotton candy, paper spinners, other candies and childrens toys were being sold all along the street.
It all reminded me quite a lot of the marching bands back home in the City of Bergen, Norway when we celebrate our national holiday on the 17th of May. The mood in the crowd was quite excited, and Boye and I were positively affected by the mood. As we reached the waterfront, in a spot near the Jagdish temple where you also see the Palace hotel in the distance, the whole procession stopped. Here spectacular dances were performed by the women’s procession, while some of the young guys played their drums. In the end of the ceremony the women sank the dolls that they were carrying over their heads, in to the lake.
In the middle of this exciting festival that had more or less fallen into our laps, Boye and I would meet two different individuals that would greatly shape our experiences in the coming days. First, in the middle of the crowd I started to talk with a young Indian guy (probably in his 20’s), and he passionately told me about what this whole festival was about. After I had told him about how Boye and I were tourists from Norway in Northern Europe, he all of a sudden was eager to introduce me to his mother. It turned out his mother ran a cultural cooking course for tourists, and we were invited to partake in a course the next morning.
Maybe two hours later as the crowds were slowly dispersing, Boye and I would end up talking to a guy, who would quickly become our foremost buddy in Udaipur. I remember our friend Vishnu so vividly still to this day. His very passionate face whether he talked about the women’s festival, Jodhpur where his family were from, or the University of Udaipur where he studied. We bonded in the fact that we all were or had been students, and being a student anywhere in the world where I have travelled always seems to have a lot in common. People always talk about how they are stressed with all the stuff they have to do next week, and tell about their funniest stories of getting drunk in their student collectives, as we call it in Northern Europe. Maybe it’s called fraternities in India, I don’t know.
We hung out with Vishnu the whole evening. Boye and Vishnu shared a smoke at a bridge on the other side of the water where the whole festival had taken place. I remember feeling very alive and excited that evening, and especially vividly I remember how Indian Vishnu’s body language seemed to me as Boye and Vishnu were discussing some differences in Indian and European culture. I was still very excited about everything we had experienced that day when we arrived at the hotel late that evening. The next day was full of exciting plans, but I couldn’t help just sitting and listen to the spellbinding Indian music being played in the hotel lobby. I sat at a saloon table near the reception for too long before I went to sleep.
Next day we woke up around 9-10ish and headed out in time to find our way to the cooking course that Shashi had agreed to hold for us the day before. We saw a few interesting things in our short walk from the hotel to hi’s house.
Shashi was a lovely woman, passionate about telling her own story, and she answered very openly and honestly to all our questions about Indian culture, and what growing up and living as a woman in the Bhraman caste in Udaipur was really like. She showed us how to make traditional Indian Chai, Chapati, Potato & Onion Pakora, Coriander & Mango Chutney, Masala (magic) Sauce, Aloo Palak, Palak Paneer and Butter Masala. I have to be honest and say that no Chai I ever tasted since that day never tasted as good as the Chai Shashi made for us. She described how to do every step of the process in making every single dish. There were too many things to remember for me to get it all well printed in my memory but luckily I bought her cooking book, which I very much enjoy bringing out every now and then. The Palak Paneer with Chutney and the Butter Masala was also particularly tasty. We ate like kings in Shashi’s kitchen, while she passionately told us about the life of women in the Mewari kingdom’s capital, Udaipur.
After we left Shashi's place, we slowly strolled along the channel back in the direction of our hotel and the city centre. We went and rested for a while at the hotel, feeling full and satisfied. Afterwards we headed out to see a Rajasthani theatre play, in one of the many traditional culture houses in Udaipur that Omer had recommended us to check out. That play was one of the more spectacular ones I had seen in my whole life. It seemed to be a retelling of a story about one of the incarnations of Shiva. It was half play but also half talent show, as one of the female actors did some quite impressive feats of balancing eight loose items on top of her forehead, while stepping on broken glass. I never saw something like it before. The play itself was quite interesting to watch, although Boye and I could not exactly understand what the story was supposed to teach us, but that didn’t matter to us.
After two low key amazing day’s in Udaipur I didn’t have too much expectation that the last day could top what we had experienced thus far in the city. We had agreed to meet Vishnu in one of the markets in the town centre. Vishnu took us around town showing some of his favourite spots. He showed us some fine handicraft stores, but recommended we save our money for the larger and more impressive markets in Jaipur, that we would visit soon. We went to an art exhibition, where we weren’t allowed to take any pictures, but I can say the pictures were quite captivating. Vishnu claimed he had met the artist, and that this was his favourite artist in Udaipur.
Next, Vishnu brought us to see the inside of the Jagdish temple. He said he tried to visit the temple once a week, every Friday. It was Friday that day, and in a few hours there would be a ceremony in the temple. Vishnu explained many of the statues of the gods in the temple, what they were called, and which stories from the Vedic texts were depicted where. I kept touching many of the sculptures as he walked in circles praying at all the divine stone statuettes. A Bhraman in the temple offered to give us a tour of the temple grounds and we accepted, Vishnu casually just walked over to a corner and sat down to relax and maybe even contemplate, while Boye and I partook in the tour. The most exciting part of the tour for me was when we were allowed into the work room of the craftsmen working on pieces of religious art, all their work funded by the temple. They also made decorative pieces on fine silk, which they eagerly offered to sell to us. I bought a small affordable art piece, that I could easily fit in my backpack.
I don’t have any pictures of the temple ceremony, but any Hindu could tell you more or less what these ceremonies are usually like. People started to crowd into the temple grounds, maybe about an hour after our tour had ended. The Bhraman (priests) allowed everyone into the holy building in the middle of the temple grounds. First everyone walked three rounds around the room, touching as many holy symbols as they could, while doing a quick prayer at each of the depictions of the divinities. Next everyone sat down on the floor, and the women started singing. Since I had told Vishnu that I play the drums, I was handed some kind of bell instrument, and I started shaking it in the rhythm of the other bell players. The ceremony went on with one of the Bhramans doing some form of holy ceremony, and then he fed everyone some yellow rice porridge that tasted of Indian spices.
After the temple ceremony we ate a quick dinner in a place Vishnu recommended, then Vishnu waved down what appeared to be two motorbike taxis to go to a club he wanted to bring Boye and I to. In appreciation of all the sightseeing Vishnu had offered us throughout the whole day, Boye and I bought him beers every time one of us got a new round for ourselves. Randomly the club served us Danish beer (Tuborg). We got quite drunk and then danced for hours. The club started filling up, and many Indians wanted to talk to Boye and I. It was clear to us that it wasn’t every day you saw two white Norwegians dancing in the club.
Udaipur had turned out to be quite the adventure for us. My fear that the climax of our travels had already been reached when we met Polo in Jaisalmer had been proven unfounded. I’m forever grateful for the great memories that were made in Udaipur, mostly thanks to Omer again explaining everything we had to make sure we didn’t miss (Udaipur is one of Omer’s favourite cities in India). But had we not met both Shashi and Vishnu, I honestly wonder if our stay there would have turned out as magical as it did. Next blog post Boye and I will yet again catch a train, too hungover to be decent. Thanks to all my loyal readers. Although I haven’t marketed my blog at all in social media yet, I can see on Google Console that I already have a few returning readers of the blog. Cheers, and all the best wishes from Norway.
Fun fact: The summer palaces built inside the lakes have deep cellars, so that the royals can hide away from the heat in this hot arid desert state during the summer months.