Adventures of Venom - 12!!

Day 12 – 23rd November 2007
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Udaipur is a beautiful city and I really intended to see it. So today we decided that we will take one of those Rajasthan Tourism city tours and not venture out by ourselves.
We had to report at the meeting point by 830 AM, which meant that I had to get up at 7:00 AM (arrggh!). We left the luggage at the cloak room, since we had checked out of the hotel and intended to push off for Baroda by evening.

We reached the meeting point at 8:25 only to realize that no one is there. Well, we utilized the time by grabbing something to eat. The bus finally came at 9:00 and we took off immediately - we being the youngest couple in the bus!!!
The first stop was the “Lok Kala” museum, where different cultures were being depicted. The highlight of this place was the puppet show (we realized much later that we lost all photographs coz memory card was corrupted). There were masks from different places, which made me wonder what they stood for. For example the board under one specific mask read - MAN (Chandigarh), so I was like "men from chandigarh are like THAT????"
Anyways, overall it was a good place to visit.


The next stop was Rana Pratap garden. This garden is made near an old tattered fort, which Maharana Pratap's father had built to stay for one year. Wow man! They spent 2 years building forts JUST to stay for one year? Isn't that cool! The fort is in a bad shape, I would guess due to lack of any maintainance. Well, wouldn't it be nicer to maintain the fort than developing a garden!!! There is a lot of history behind this place, and it's best to go with a guide. If you don't you might feel that you are visiting a regular garden. Unless someone tells you the significance of each place (and each tree), you wouldn't appreciate this place.


We then visited the Udaipur Fort (sorry for forgetting the exact name). No snaps of this place as the memory card was corrupted and there was no point in carrying the camera. This is a private fort (another one!!!), and there were pereparations on for someone's wedding! This is where Ravina Tondon got married and you could actually book this place for your wedding at a modest price of 2 crores (yeah right!!).

We also saw an old temple, carved in marble. This is a temple built in 800 AD ,and is not in best of its shape. No snaps again!

The last stop was Saheliyo ki badi, which is a garden built for the queen to visit with her friends (hence the name). Some interesting snaps here, most of which were lost. We purchased a pair of camels made in leather from here, and also some Rajasthani style paintings.
We did some shopping from the Handicraft store opposite this place - a sari from mom and mom-in-law, hand painting for bro and myself!

Time to go back to the hotel and pack if we want to reach Vadodara before it's dark! So we pushed off at around 2:00 PM. I wanted to have daal-baati one last time before I exit Rajasthan and enter Gujarat. So we skipped lunch, had some snacks. The highway was smooth and beautiful. There is an expressway to Baroda, on which bikes are not allowed (of course). We knew that bikes won't be allowed on the expressway, but we just didn't know which route was NOT the express way. So we made the stupid mistake of entering the express. As was expected, a security gaurd came running and stopped us. He screamed at us, and I put him in place at once - "Tamiz se baat karo". This ofcourse annoyed him (I tend to annoy almost everyone I speak with!). He wanted us to pay a fine of 500 bucks, we ofcourse told him to fuck off. Since there were no signs nor any board mentioning that bikes are not allowed, we were adamant that we wouldn't pay. Finally we got off for 50 bucks - with him screaming in the background (who cares)!
The rest of the trip was pretty boring, expect that I ate VS's brains out for not stopping for Daal-bati. Guess it wasn't meant to be.

We were stopping over at my cousin's place in Baroda, so no tension of booking a hotel. We reached her place at around 9:00PM. She stays with her in-laws so I couldn't remove my jacket even after I reached her place (worried that I might offend her in-laws with my strap top under the jacket!!!) Her husband is a very sweet man, and her son sweeter. We chit chatted till 1:00 AM, we were of course verrry sleepy, but the son wanted to play cricket (he is just 3 yrs old). And he (the son) wouldn't talk to me coz I don't speak Gujarati, he would talk only to VS!! Yeah right, talk about a punjabi talking in gujarati!!!! But VS did a good job and actually impresed me. Now this is strange, coz I am a Maharashtrian (and so is my cousin and her husband, but their son speaks Gujarati!!)

We finally went off to sleep at around 1:30 AM and we slept like logs.

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Day 12 ends.