UDAIPUR

A few photos from Udaipur, where Alan and I stayed right on the bank of Lake Pichola.  This is a view from the lake of the City Palace museum, just along from our hotel.

We took a boat ride around part of the lake at sunset, which was beautiful.

These two views across the lake were taken at breakfast time from our hotel rooftop restaurant.  That sounds very grand, but there were only three rooms, and we never saw the other residents.  This view is of the Floating Palace hotel.

You can see that Lake Pichola is not just for pleasure.  We saw lots of people bathing in it.

This is the view across Jaipur from the City Palace Museum.  

The next few shots are from a market that we explored.  This is Jaggery, an unrefined sugar.  I suspect that it is very similar to Demerara sugar.  It is sold in chunks and I think it is mostly used in desserts.

Lots of wonderfully pungent spices on display.

This beautiful display of bangles is so colourful.

Frying chickpeas to make those tasty snacks (are they simply called Chana?).  I was all set to buy some, until I saw the guy playing around with the cooked ones and his bare hands.  Hmm, no knowing what they had been touching!

A blacksmith and his helper.  He hammered for a while, and then the two of them would so some synchronised hammering.

Alfresco cooking.

A farmer with the skinniest legs I have ever seen on a man.

These ladies are collecting their water.  We also saw cattle here using the trough a bit further along.  It is easy to forget how precious water is, until you see how carefully it is used in India.  We saw lots of hand pumps along the roadsides, and apparently even in the cities, some people only have water for a few hours a day.

This scene reminded me so much of Africa.  An elegant lady with a pot on her head.

Ranakpur - a Jain temple, situated somewhere outside of Jaipur.

The interior was very serene, even with the tourists.  It all looked like this, cream and pure.