a temple, a palace, a lake and a mouse

Udaipur

Jumped off the train after reasonable although quite broken sleep, Bec says she hardly slept at all.  From the station got a tuk tuk to the Dream Heaven Guesthouse, sounded good in one of our guidebooks.  Unfortunately the guesthouse was full but we stayed to have breakfast and waited in hope that someone would check out of their room, which luckily they did.  It was worth waiting for, the room is nice, the open air restaurant looks down over the river and the palace across the lake.  Its really hot and sunny here, it was warm in Delhi but the sun hid behind the smog, by comparison the air here is like pure oxygen.
Got out in the morning and visited the Jagdish Temple which is an old Hindu temple adorned with amazingly detailed carvings set in all around its stone walls.  As with most places like this there's always a few people trying to make a few rupees from passing tourists, there's the weird looking Sadhus sitting on the steps who want paying if you point a camera within a 180 degree radius of them, there's the people who want paying to look after your shoes whilst you walk barefoot around the temple, then there was the fella who followed us around feeding us friendly information about the temple motivated only by his own enthusiasm and goodwill but also it turns out just happened to have an art gallery across the road that he insists we must visit.  After leaving the temple the man tried to usher us into his gallery but knowing we were set for a hard sell when the gallery became a shop we walked on by much to his annoyance.

We went over to the City Palace next, a big hilltop palace alongside the lake.  The huge palace and its grounds look impressive and imposing from outside but once inside its all a bit faded and consists mainly of a repetitive drawn out museum display that after a while eveyone is walking straight past following the route to the exit.  I have to admit my enthusiasm was dwindling partly due to the hordes of school trips packing every room and blocking all the narrow doorways.
One thing that is still amusing me is all the photo requests from Indian people.  Becci always declines but I'm always up for it, I posed today with a whole family who seemed quite excited to have a real genuine Englishman in their photo!
We took a boat trip around the lake and then headed back in the afternoon as I had started to feel quite unwell.  Looks like my previous comments abouts 'Delhi belly' being a myth were somewhat premature!
We went to a nearby restaurant for tea where we discovered they had a bit of a mouse problem, by the end of the night everyone else knew too due to Bec's cartoon style Shrieks.  What Bec thought was a mouse was actually several mice but I thought best not to say or else Bec might still be there now stood on a chair screaming.