Dancing with pots
Once back in Udaipur, we visited the local spice market to get some pics.
The market was sprawled over several small streets with most stalls set up in little shop fronts, rather than on the ground. Lots of people asked for photos as usual, so we spend a couple of hours snapping away then showing people the pics on the LCD screen. One old man was so blown away by seeing his picture that I am sure it was the first time he has had it taken. I took a pic with him and his grandson and got their stall address so will see if a copy can find him via snailmail.
Another day trip on March 7th - this time to Dungapur. Nafish, the guy who runs our hotel, said dung means bum so he kept laughing and saying we were going to bumville! Crazy funny man who got the giggles a lot, especially with us egging him on! The trip to Dungapur was on well made highways so was very uneventful. Uneventful until we actually got into the town of Dungapur when our driver went to la-la land for a minute and pulled out to pass one auto and ran straight into another auto. Luckly we were only going about 20kph so damage to us was nil and to the car and auto not so much. Luckily Rp250 from our driver to the auto resolved the situation and we headed on to the palace hotel.
The palace hotel was originally a palace but now half has been turned into a hotel, with the Maharaj of the region living in the other half of the old palace. It is a grand ornate building which has been well maintained.
The pool area is great - the pool is designed so it looks like it flows straight into the lake which neighbours the palace. It seemed like a good place to stay for a couple of days.
After the ‘new’ palace, we headed to the old palace. 700 years old and 9 storeys, it was very run down but throughout it were hints of the amazing place it must have been when people lived there. Lots of the paintings on the wall were still there and the sitting room was still fairly intact with its mirrored tiles and mosaics. The green maharani’s room was gorgeous with paintings of elephants and horses.
There was a Shiva room and Krishna room where faint paintings of these two gods still covered the walls. The place isn’t totally uninhabited - as we walked up the narrow stone stair case, a tiny leg of a bat moved and pulled itself back into the dark safety behind the door!
We stopped for a quick look at a couple of old temples before heading home. I noticed that instead of the meticulous stone fences which covered the hills on the way to Kumbhalgarh, this time fences were grown from cacti - less maintainance at least!
That night we went to the show at the Cultural centre. The actual space was fantastic - some old ornate building with an open courtyard in the centre, with arches and trees. We took our seats on the cushions on the floor and watched demonstrations of fabulous traditional dances, performed by women in colorful decorated costumes.
A puppet show had people laughing as a Maharaja juggled his head with hands and feet. The show concluded with the pot dance - a dance by one woman who progressively carried more and more pots on her head. The pots themselves weren’t enough so she not only lay down on the ground with the pots on her head and picked up a scarf with her teeth, she also danced on a pile of broken glass. The finale saw her run around in a large circle with over 10 pots on her head, leaving the stage to a frezy of claps and cheers!
The following day, Dey and I hired a small paddle boat and somehow managed to manaouvre our way around the lake. Well, we zig zag’d and backtracked a lot, but we did make it around. So many of our pictures are crooked though - amazing how hard it is to get a staight horizon in a tiny rocking floating boat!
For dinner we headed to ‘new’ Nataraj - a reknowned Thali restaurant. For Rp70 (about AUD2) we had a bottom-less thali made from the freshest ingredient, served by about 10 different waiters each offering a different curry, masala, dahl or bread. It was fantastic! On our way back to the hotel, we noticed a street we hadn’t explored which looked like it would offer an excellent shopping experience!
Exploring it that night, Dey found a store where she literally liked almost every minature painting in there and struggled to reduce her purchase to under 50! Well, 50 is an exageration, but that night and the next day Dey added at least another 10 pics to her growing collection! 
We headed back to the street the next day, our last day in Udaipur, and not only discovered a much needed place which made real expresso coffee (YAY!!) but had a beautiful, tranquil garden courtyard out the back. We passed a few hours relaxing in the garden oasis before heading reluctantly back to our hotel to pack.