Udaipur

It's almost 8 AM in Udaipur and Team India is up and ready. Yesterday, after a big breakfast, we visited the City Palace and Crystal Gallery in central Udaipur - what one local told me was the "old city." The Palace was, as you might expect, very beautiful. It was made of white marble, most of which was exquisitely and pain-stakingly carved. Some of it was painted many bright colors, but in other parts it was clear the paint had worn off over the years. I wasn't real clear on the date that the palace was built, but I think it was sometime in the 16th century. Udaipur was at that time the capital of the Mewar kingdom, which was a Rajput kingdom that resisted the Mughal invasions. Many of the passageways and doorways are small and narrow, and the staircases steep. There were many courtyards and, on the top floors, windows that opened out over the lake which brought in some very pleasant breezes. It was a hot day yesterday - felt like Mobile in late June. The Crystal Gallery was very beautiful with many items like bedframes and chairs made from pure crystal. You aren't allowed to take photographs in the gallery, so I'll just have to explain later what we saw.

I'm still studying the driving patterns in India because I believe there is something to learn. At first glance, it would appear that there are no rules at all. Cars, motorcycles, pedestrians, cows move in and out of traffic from all directions. Weaving is common, as is cutting people off - particularly on the roundabouts. Yet there are some rules that seem to be understood by everyone at some root level. It seems that success on India's roads is all about the law of positioning. In order to get from point A to point B, a motorist (or pedestrian, or cow) has to move into the flow of traffic and trust that everyone else has seen and agreed to the positioning and will adjust their direction and/or speed accordingly. It's kind of like moving into the flow of traffic after a football game, or a concert, or the mall at Christmas. You establish your position, move in, and hope that everyone else accepts your positioning is legitimate. You've got to have thick skin to drive in India. Honking doesn't necessarily mean the driver behind you is angry. I have seen no road rage at all here, but plenty of occasions where it would have been understandable. Honking is simply an announcement - a way of saying "here I am." There also seems to be a pecking order on the streets: cars seem to have more pull on the roadways than, say, motorcycles. If the driver of a car and a motorcyclist are competing for the same position, the car seems to win out every time. That may seem like an obvious point, but I'm waiting to see the rogue motorcyclist who decides to take on the cars by doing his/her own thing. I'll let you know if that happens. More on the traffic later. As I said, there is something to be learned here and I've got to observe a little more to make out just what that might be.

In about 10 minutes I'm going downstairs to the kitchen because our host mother is going to show me how she cooks breakfast. I'm trying to learn all the names of all the different foods we've been served. Quite literally, we have anywhere from 6 to 12 different dishes with every meal, each with its own name and unique flavor. Our hosts do a good job of telling us the names of the dishes, but I'm not on my toes enough to remember more than about one each meal. The food is spicy, but not unbearably so. They do offer great combinations of spicy and sweet, and the idea is to take a sweet, cool dish after a spicy dish as a way of cooling off your tongue and cutting some of the spice's bite. The food is delicious, and we get served plenty of it. Each meal seems to be about 6 or 7 courses and I'm still trying to adjust to that routine. Because first course, which we would call an appetizer or snack, seems like a meal in and of itself. So, if you load up on the "snack" you don't have much room for all the other dishes, which come out from the kitchen one at a time. At our last several meals, rice has been served last. In some of my next postings, I'll try to give the names and specific descriptions of some of the dishes we have been served.

Today we're off for some more sightseeing around Udaipur. Hopefully, I'll have some more things to tell you tomorrow morning. I'm sure that I will. Thank-you for checking in, and feel free to leave comments if you like, especially any questions you might have. So long for now - PW