Udaipur

On Wednesday night we boarded a sleeper train. We sat and ate our dinner of crisps, chocolate and bananas then settled into our bunks for the night. We decided to try class 2AC (AC stands for air conditioning) which is a carriage with sets of two tier bunks in it rather than three tier and where each bed has a curtain that pulls across it. Unfortunately for us, there were some exceptionally noisy families in our carriage so we didn't get to sleep they disembarked at Jaipur 5 hours later.

14 hours later we arrived into the city of Udaipur in the southern part of Rajasthan at 8.30am on Thursday morning and took a tuk-tuk the short ride to our guesthouse. The city of Udaipur is situated on Lake Pichola and is prettier and far quieter than any of the other places we have visited in India so far. We checked into our room which overlooks the Lake and the 'Lake Palace', a beautiful white palace and famous 5* hotel built on an island in the centre of the lake . It was used in the James Bond movie 'Octopussy'. After a shower (under a tap on the wall!!) we headed out into the town, starting our day with some delicious cake and a cappuccino at a 'German Bakery'.

Having had enough time to suss out Udaipur and the amount of time we wanted to spend, we took a tuk-tuk the short distance back to the train station to book our onward tickets to Jaipur. Over 14 million people travel the trains here each day and there is a specified 'tourist quota' so for some journeys you have to be booked well in advance. It was not a very successful trip as everything was totally booked. Unbeknown to us there is a big Holi festival in Jaipur and Delhi starting around 7th March so hotels and train seats are almost all booked out. With little other option and in a bit of a panic we returned to our hotel to look at other options. As regularly occurs, we had to firmly tell the tuk tuk driver to 'get lost' when he tried to renege on our agreed fare at the end of the journey!!

We decided not to risk our lives on the notoriously dangerous and rather horrid night buses and were lucky enough to find a cheap flight on Jet Airways to Jaipur. We were so disappointed to be missing out on the train as they are a really cheap, easy and comfortable way to travel... in the right class of course!!! However, the prospect of a 45 minute flight was more appealing than a 14 hour bus rickety journey. We had enough of those through South America! From Jaipur we managed to get a train ticket 6 hours to Dehli, our final destination and exit point.

We had read that Udaipur is famous for its cooking courses and being huge foodies we were very keen to give one a go! We checked out two highly recommended classes, one run by a company called 'The Spice Box' and the other a family run kitchen course. They both offered instruction on how to prepare totally different dishes so we adopted the 'only here once' attitude and booked onto both.. one for each day of our stay! We had a delicious Thali lunch and then in the afternoon we wandered the beautiful city palace, situated on a hill in the city centre which afforded fantastic views over both the city and Lake Pichola.

That evening we joined the 'Spice Box' cooking school and with no one else there we had a private lesson just for the two of us. The chef called Shakti showed us through the basics of Indian cooking, spices and masalas and from this we then prepared many different dishes ranging from Malai Kofta, Palak Paneer, Vegetable Cutlets and Biryani through to making our own Chapattis, Chai tea and a deliciously different Kashmiri Saffron Tea. The lesson was a little less hands on than we had experienced in Thailand and a little more like a cookery demonstration but nevertheless very informative and we shouldn't have any trouble making the dishes back home. We ate everything that was cooked and so we rolled out of the cooking course and collapsed absolutely stuffed in our hotel room afterwards!!

On Friday morning we had a leisurely start (sleep-ins have been few and far between) and walked to the beautiful 17th century Jagdish Temple, which stands high on another hill in Udaipur and is carved ornately with stone elephants and camels. From here we wandered some of the small stalls, looking at the various clothes and handmade leather-bound books on offer. Bi bought a skirt and a leather journal (made from camel hide as cows are sacred here) to use to create her own Indian cookery bible... Ash did all the bartering as he has mastered it now!

We crossed to the other side of the lake to the much less touristy Hanuman Ghat area which was much like some of the other places we have visited: ramshackle old stone houses that look half finished, stalls cooking amazing looking sweets and samosas, cows and goats wandering down the streets as if they were people and rickshaws bumping around. We stopped in the local kitchenware shops and bartered oursleves some good deals on a spice box and kadhai (an indian style wok which they weigh to determine the price) so that we can put some of our newly learned cooking skills into practice when we get back to England!

That afternoon we went for another cooking course, run by a nice Indian lady called Sushma. The course was fantastic, well paced and extremely informative and we learned to cook many different dishes that we hadn't learned before. We cooked Paneer Butter Masala, Aloo Gobi, Dal Makhani and made stuffed Paneer Parathas which was delicious! Sushma is a wealth of knowledge and so we picked her brains on everything and anything about Indian cooking. Again we ate all that was cooked and returned back to our hotel absolutely stuffed again! So far so good, eating in India has been a lot better than expected although we have been pretty selective.

Tomorrow we catch an early morning flight the short 45 minute hop to Jaipur, in North Eastern Rajasthan where we will spend a couple of days.