Monsoon finally arrives in Udaipur

Have been relaxing in Udaipur for a few days and using it as a base to explore places in the area on day- or overnight-trips.  The city is a little more picturesque, clean and laid back than some others in Rajasthan, so that's something to enjoy.  The oldest (therefore most touristy) part is on either side of Lake Pichola, which is lined with dhobi ghats: steps down to the water where people pound their clothes clean, bath or just swim for pleasure.  To be honest, the water's not that clean and I wouldn't go near it, but obviously my constitution is weaker than the average Indian's.  It's actually very pretty, especially at dusk when the sunlight bounces off the buildings, the temple bells ring and the bats (huge bats) start flying up the lake.  I've never seen so many bats.

Trash in Lake Pichola

What more could you want?

Day trip to Kumbhalgarh Fort and as you can see below, the weather has changed.  Like a reluctant school child, monsoon has finally arrived in this part of India a month and a half late.  It didin't rain till later but in the morning, the weather was very Scottish: misty, romantic, cool. KF is huge with a number of temples and ruins inside of it.  I didn't have enough time to explore.

Kumbhalgarh Fort: reminded me of MacBeth for some reason

Then on to the Jain temple at Ranakpur - all marble.

Ranakpur temple: everything carved out of marble

Monkeys at the Surya Temple

 As you can see, the terrain is much hillier and greener here in southern Rajasthan than it was in the desert areas of the north and west.  Mount Abu is a popular hill station near the Gujarat border so I headed there for a bit more trekking.  Sadly, the place turned out to be more like a cross between Niagara Falls and Wasaga Beach at the beginning of a long weekend: cars packed with people streaming in for the weekend, over-exuberant Gujaratis, horror-houses, swan paddle boats, balloon rides, pony rides etc.  To make matters worse (or better?) the next day was Krishna's birthday, so it was a holiday.  Snagging what felt like the last available guest-house room in town - a moldy room much overpriced at Rs 1000 and only available for one night - I made the best of things, got in one nice hike, ate some good food and got out of dodge a day ahead of schedule and thousands more holiday makers streamed uphill into town. 

Arrived back in Udaipur Friday evening to discover the Dahi Handi competition in full swing in front of the Jagdish temple near my hotel.  Part of Krishna's birthday celebrations, in the DH competition, teams of men build human pyramids to see who will be the first to reach and smash a pot of curd (dahi) or what looked more like ghee (liquified butter) in this case.  I don't have any pictures, but here's a link to the Udaipur paper.

And here's a video from 2010 in Udaipur.  This year's wasn't quite this dramatic, but you get the idea.  Also, sadly, I didn't have such a good viewpoint.   This is obviously just the climax of a longer competition that sees a few elimination rounds to weed out the weaker teams by pouring oil (or ghee) on them to makes things as slippery as possible.

Tomorrow, the bus to Diu, which is an island off the coast of Gujarat.  If mother nature cooperates and there isn't too much rain, then I'm hoping to enjoy the beaches and some seafood before heading back to Delhi.