March 8, Thursday

March 8, Thursday

Udaipur:   The best part of the hotel where I am staying is the roof top terrace.   There are a few islands on the lake, where some old palaces were located, but I did not get the chance to take a boat out to them.  In any case, I'm not fond of boats, especially the ones I've seen in India.

 
Hotels across the lake from my hotel.   Wouldn't these 2 pictures make great jig-saw puzzles !!!

  Ladies doing their laundry in the lake.  Men bathe in there as well.

Everything is closed today for Holi Day:   shops, tourist attractions, etc so nothing to visit.   The hotel has wifi in the lobby so I’ll spend part of the day up-dating my blog and doing some research.   I thought there would have been much more noise than there was last night in the streets around the hotel, but by 1 am it was fairly quiet.  I guess being near the river and blocks away from the main square and market area helped.

I managed to take some pictures of people walking in the narrow laneway below my hotel window so you could see what they look like one they’ve been “Holi’ed”.  No one looks wet by the way, so maybe I will try to go out for a short walk this afternoon, though I’ve seen mostly young men, hardly any women.

 This is the only glimpse I get of the lake from my room.
   Even little kids get to go out for some fun.

I got dressed in the white blouse and pants and went down to the hotel lobby to connect to the internet and update my blog. While I was there, many other young tourists who had been out for the day came in, covered with paint… from head to toe ! (Too bad I didn’t have my camera with me) It was in their eyes, ears, hair, clothes. One young lady actually was wet and said that in some streets people were throwing water from their roofs and windows; at least they were hoping it was water. I wanted some powdered paint on my clothes, but not that much. Some of the young guys who work at the hotel took turns going out in the streets; one of them had been out the night before and had encountered some red paint. Today he was still red; the paint had not washed off because some of the pigments are meant to stay on ! OK, definitely not going out, but as the tourists came in to the hotel, I would ask for a hug, and in that way got some colour on my white clothes. One of the other guides was in the lobby and had a bag of yellow powder with him; he asked if I wanted some and I agreed to just a little bit. He put a dot on my forehead, then reached into the bag again, brought it up towards my face, then quickly opened the neck of my blouse and dropped a whole handful inside it. AAH ! He thought it was hilarious. I now have a beige lace bra with yellow stains all over the front of it. When I undressed, I also found some green pigment on the back of it; how that got there I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA !   

I spent a nice afternoon talking to many fellow travellers while updating my blog and uploading some pictures. It is a long process ! One of the older hotel employees was glaring at me for some reason and I decided to go back to my room (maybe he thought it was inappropriate that I was hugging strangers) or (maybe because Neema came by to check on me, the Uma stopped by as well).

I tried to take pictures of myself in the mirror. Figures it would be the only hotel room that did not have a full length mirror and one that was high up on the wall.   It was kind of tricky to take pictures of myself.  Had to take about 6 before I managed to capture myself, but I needed a lasting memory of the experience.

   Not bad for someone who did not go out into the streets to play "Holi"

 

Since my room is directly over the lobby area, just one flight up, I decided to try the internet connection from there and it worked.  I was able to upload another day on my blog.

There were lots of emails to answer and I finally got onto Facebook as well.  It was almost 2 am by the time I turned off the lights.