Namaste from Udaipur

We arrived in Udaipur in central Rajasthan at 8 am yesterday--our first overnight train trip in India. Sadly, all that was available was the third class car, and let me tell you--I don't recommend it. It could have been worse, but it was very cold, with very bad smells, very loud snoring, and very hard seats. On the plus side, I had just bought a wool scarf, which I was able to use as a blanket. And, we had no attacks of the bad Delhi Belly on the train. So that was good. Plus it was cheap (about $8 for both of s for the 9 hour trip). It was only 2 hours late, which for India travel is not bad at all.

So we made it and Udaipur is a little Indian gem. It's relaxed and clean and lots of buildings have gorgeous rooftop views of Lake Pichola and the floating palace in the middle of it. (For great views of the city watch the horrible Bond movie Octopussy--which was just saw at a guest house last night and rolled our eyes most of the time. The worst of the worst sexist Bond dialogue and cheesy jokes. But it really does have nice views of Udaipur.)

The monkeys in Udaipur are different than the ones we've seen further east. They are bigger, and lanky, with really long limbs, and incredibly long tails, and black faces. And they can jump really far. Like from building to building. Sam nearly got attacked by one last night, walking up some stairs to the roof and coming face to face with a big papa. They stared at each other for a second from about a foot apart, and then the monkey bared its teeth. Sam nearly fell down the stairs.

Yesterday we went for a long walk to the city palace and along the water and took a boat ride out to Jagmandir Island, which is an old palace ringed by marble elephants-then back to the city for sunset. Tonight we'll head to Monsoon Palace high up on a hill above town for sunset.

Holy City Varanasi is Totally and Completely Nuts

Colors, people, corpses burning on pyres, holy men, bhang, cows, goats all mixed together and bathing in the Ganges.

Taj Mahal

You can take a lot of pictures of the Taj--it is actually and truly amazing. Breathtaking, even.

Delhi

The Site of Ghandi's Martyrdom in Delhi

Sam walking Ghandi's last steps in Delhi

Ghandi's room for the last 144 days of his life.

I'm sitting next to a monk at an internet cafe

He's wearing crimson robes and a Patagonia fleece that's the exact same color as his robes. I wonder if he went from store to store trying to match the fleece to the robes, or lucked out on the first try? Or maybe the fleece is standard issue with the robes? I wish I had my camera so I could take a surreptitious picture, but that would be wrong, and I wouldn't like it if someone was taking my picture while I'm sitting here typing and trying to download pictures and whatnot. Which, by the way, is exactly what monks do at internet cafes. We saw dozens of them in Laos, where most men at some point in their lives are temporarily ordained and spent a year or two at a wat. So all over Laos there are these little guys--like as little as 8 or 9, from the looks of them--who are wearing saffron robes and checking their email, or smoking cigarettes behind the temple (I swear!) or riding around town on the back of a tuk tuk.

We're in Delhi now, staying in New Tibet, a quiet refuge full of Tibetans in the northern part of the city (thanks to Matt who recommended it). We got in at about 2 am after flying for 25 hours (that's right--Delhi is basically right next to Singapore, our previous stop, but because we bought our tickets with miles instead of cash, we could only fly into Delhi through PARIS. Which I assure you, is really far out of the way).

Singapore was great. We weren't expecting much, other than the big treat that we got to catch up with our friend Justin, but it was a really great city. We ate tons of delicious food at hawker stalls (highlights were the raw fish and Singapore noodles) and mostly fixed some belly problems we'd been having since Laos, and did a whole lotta laundry. Like finally washed everything in our bags for the first time since we hit the road in November. And Justin, who has been living there for nearly three years but is moving to Nanjing China in just 2 weeks, really showed us a good time. We went for a long walk through the city, including the Arab district, the colonial quarter and the crazy harbor and skyscrapers of downtown. We went to the best food courts and street stalls and had our final night's dinner in the red light district before saying goodbye. We're already trying to figure out how we might get to Nanjing to visit in the not too distant future.

Vientiane