We were sad to leave the hotel in Johdpur (also their breakfast buffet was the best of the trip - banana fritters and pancakes and fried coconut), but further adventures awaited on the trip to Udaipur and in the city itself. The drive to Udaipur is substantial from Johdpur, but about halfway between them is the Ranakpur Jain Temple. Now, we'd been to a number of Jain temples before, and the party was not necessarily that excited about another one. However, this one proved to be very special indeed, and one of the highlights of the entire trip in my book. It is also the largest Jain temple in India. More pictures on Flickr.
Before that though, it was Ana's turn to feel sick again, probably due to anti-malarials, again, so she wasn't up for walking around in the temple, and grabbed a bench outside in the sun. One interesting thing we encountered in India was the desire of substantial number of people have pictures of us or to be in pictures with one or both of us. We didn't mind as long as they asked, but when people just walked up to us and started taking pictures, the temptation to be all, 'So, that'll be 200 rupees' was pretty strong. Apparently while waiting on the bench a family approached Ana, sat down, and started taking pictures clearly intended to prominently feature her. In this case, she exploited a scratchy throat and began deep hacking coughs, leading to the father shouting at the family "No touch! TB!" an ignominious scamper for all involved away from the area. Well played!
We opted for the free audio guide tour instead of a live tour and headed up into the temple.
And were immediately gobsmacked by the scale and detail of the stonecarving. The light coming in through many elaborate windows made the massive structure feel light and airy.
As an active/in use Jain temple, you were supposed to be silent in here. Nobody was paying the SLIGHTEST attention to this and it was actually quite loud and echo-y. There was also a portion of the temple being used for religious purposes where only Jain were supposed to go. In practice, our friend told us they weren't exactly checking but they were letting in folks who looked Indian and not so much the foreigners.
This carving was not a short project, and I assume you really don't want to make mistakes.
Smaller outbuilding exterior.
Just amazing work.
After the temple we headed over for lunch at a nearby tourist trap restaurant/resort. As mentioned before, it was pretty hard to get the driver or anyone else to not take us to restaurants aimed at foreigners. I included this shot because it shows our mighty steed, the Toyota Innova, and the exterior of the resort.
Lunch was actually pretty tasty with the coconut cashew chicken.
After lunch, continuing on to Udaipur, the road got pretty exciting, with a lot of winding mountain roads and significant drops. Among the prettier terrain we'd seen, and I would love to drive it in a more spirited manner in a sportier car, though I don't think we'll go back to India just for that.
The hotel in Udaipur was part of a large national chain aimed at businesspeople, so it was fairly professional and reasonably well-appointed. Hot water again!
Christmas decorations in the lobby.
Room looks like it would most anywhere else - nice. The TV in the next room over was extremely audible, which was a downside - it looked like they were using the same switch and electrical boxes to mount both TV's back to back - which is essentially a direct air pathway for sound to transit through.They turned if off relatively early at night, so we were able to sleep. However, there was one really unusual thing about the room. See the curtain? You would think that there would be windows behind it, yes?
Well technically, yes. However, the windows looked out into an unfinished maintenance corridor - which could, if one were a creeper, be used to go look into all the different rooms. We were pretty sure that this was new construction and behind a new, large, lit-up piece of art in the lobby. For the record, we did not go look into the other rooms, and we locked out windows and put the curtain over them. Dinner was at the hotel's 'Spanish' bar, and we dared to order some allegedly Spanish food. I don't think it was terribly authentic but for us Not-Indian was a great thing and we enjoyed it. Also tried some India-only whiskey blends that were unexceptional, but still add to Things Tried.
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