Udaipur, Chittorgarh, AND HOLI!

After the amazing Ellora/Ajanta caves we were on our way to Rajistan. There was a bit of distance to cover, and no direct trains so we had to spend a night in Surat. In short it is a shitty place that is well known for little more than having a mass epidemic of 'THE PLAGUE' in 1994! Yeah, not the cleanest city... Below is a picture of the slums that welcomed us as we came in on the train.


Actually from the train, we could see the above sign 'Hotel Galaxy'. In person believe it or not it looked a lot worse. I teased Jillene that we'll have to stay there, however after checking out other hotels that were either full or over priced we decided better have a look. We wanted a nice place to relax for the night and next day until our train to Udaipur, as we didn't really plan on spending too much time out in the city. Needless to say we were blown away when we walked into reception up on the 10th floor!Gives a whole new meaning to 'you can't judge a book by its cover'. So for $20 a night we relaxed in comfort and ate room service avoiding the scummy city outside that didn't seem to have anything to offer.
So after our brief adventure in Surat we arrived in Udiapur and we found vendors selling little bags of coloured powder (above) all over the city. Whats that all about we asked ourselves... well we were going to find out the next night, and more so the following day.
A walk through the local veggie market...
Spices for sale...
These are cenographs, which are memorials to past Maharajahs and Udaipur royal family members...
A little colour in local gardens.
And our highlight of the overly touted palace in Udaipur. Ever wonder how the Maharajah took a dump a few hundred years ago?

Jillene's picture of a pigeon at sunset... we took a rickshaw to the top of a hill/mountain for sunset hoping to get a good view. Amongst all of India's smog it didn't amount to much, hence the picture of a pigeon! :)
Back in Udaipur they built this funny thing out of straw just down the road from the hotel. It took us a bit to figure out what they were going to do with it...
People started showing up, and the next thing we knew there was a huge crowd and a stage was assembled for a little show. But the highlight was yet to come...By this time we'd been told it was the eve of Holi. India's festival of colours which is celebrated over the entire country. And when I say celebrate, I mean they look forward to this like we look forward to Christmas. After an insane quantity of firecrackers were set off (I mean several thousand), the straw structure was set on fire. And if that doesn't seem exciting enough for you, the Indians agree very much. They decided to pack the thing in fireworks. The picture does it no justice, but when we get home you HAVE TO SEE THE VIDEO ~ and even it doesn't do it full justice the mayhem that ensued. The video shows literally hundreds of fireworks going off, hundreds of people running away to take cover, and then all of them running back to the fire in celebration when it stopped. It was so crazy it knocked out the power over the entire block, as there were transformers only 20-30 feet away. Oh India, we love you...
And then the celebration really starts the next morning... don't go outside in nice clothes. You won't like what happens. The entire country turns into a massive water fight, and colour smear fest. I stupidly thought I would be spared if I asked politely. Yeah, that didn't work... Lucky for Jillene she wasn't feeling too well spent the majority of the morning in bed. I came back in later to tell her it was probably a good idea to just hang out in the hotel room and recover! I was in pretty good shape, I had only spent 2 minutes outside at this point. Above is how everyone in the country looked by lunch.Things settled down by 2, and then a massive clean up ensued. We were able to sneak outside with only the old water balloon being thrown at us. After we implored the odd person whom just didn't want the fun to stop that we'd already clean up, we managed to avoid getting smeared with more colours and go for a walk. Above is a picture of Udaipurs palace from the other side of the river.
We did a day trip to Chittorgarh by train to go and see the fort and it's associated ruins/temples. Above is the most UNCOMFORTABLE rickshaw in all of India of which we chose to drive us around the to the sites...

A Jain temple... We saw many of these during our time in Rajistan, and the craftsmanship in all of them is truly amazing.




The fort walls...

A view from outside the fort and how high up on the hill it was built.