Udaipur

We spent an awesome couple of days in Udaipur, a chill town in southern Rajastan province. It was a nice break from the busy, intense cities. It is also known as the city of lakes, as it has a few...but due to the lack of much rain in the past few monsoon seasons, they were just a couple of smelly, dirty ponds...still nice to look at however. Went and saw the sunset from a palace up on a big hill, then checked out a palace and haveli. We met up with the Sputch and Argentinian couples again and had a blast....we all signed up for a cooking course together and learned how to make 3 Indian dishes, along with rice, chapati, parantha, and a yummy desert (golab jamun). It was by far the best Indian food I have ever eaten...so many flavors, and so fresh and not so greasy...you could actually taste the individual spices and vegetables as well as nuts. We were all in heaven except for the Argentinian girl who complained the whole time about it being too spicy (apparently she does this every meal). It was a great experience and really good to have a home-cooked meal finally. I think that in the past 3 weeks, I have only had meat twice...and honestly, there are soo many yummy veggy dishes here, that I don't really miss it. People are much friendlier now and helpful...and when you say no to something, they usually listen on the first attempt, rather than following us around for 5 minutes. Took the sleeper bus to Diu last night, which was soo much better than the train. It was warm and we had our own little cubby hole to lie down in. Diu is an island off the coast of Gujarat province and so far, so good. Ali's got a bit of an upset stomach now, but hopefully we can rent bikes and bike around the island. They are also supposed to have some nice beaches, so it'll be good to relax the next few days. Tonight our hostel has a barbeque with fresh fish, so it should be fun. We are staying in an old church that has been converted to a hostel...Diu apparently was a Portugese colony so the church was from then I believe. Anyhoo, hope you are all doing well and not freezing too much (it's probably in the 80-90s here...and it's only February!)