Udaipur -> Delhi

Udaipur was, as I think I mentioned, generally pretty charming, cleaner (though hardly clean) and prettier than the rest of India thus far. Its described as the venice of asia, somewhat apt in terms of both cleanliness and beauty. Most of the town is painted white, old or old looking architecture abounds, and the centerpiece of the town is a giant lake with two major islands that are completely taken up with palaces of raj's past that look like vertiable wedding cakes. Much of the a Bond "octopussy" was filmed here, and the hotels seem to all advertise shows of the film nightly at 7PM, though we managed to make it the entire time without seeing the show. Because it was off-season, we were able to very cheaply stay in a great hotel with phenomenal views over the city, lake, and mountains beyond, and great food in the restaurant. In fact, most of the hotels had phenomenal food.

One cool thing we did was take a cooking lesson. An older woman carefully taught us an exhaustive menu which we then got to eat- Chai, Biryani, Eggplant-Tomato Curry, Muttar Paneer (like saag paneer but with peas), Pakoras, Chapati, Paranthas, Gulab Jamun (lightly fried chunks of milk dough in sugar syrup) I actually felt confident on leaving that I much better understood how to make indian food. The secret, as Americans are just beginning to discover, is adequately cooking ("blooming") the spices and aromatics (garlic, ginger, onions) to deepen the flavor. (The cooking actually changes the chemical makeup of the spices, releasing new flavors). The whole lesson was a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to cooking for anyone upon my return and a modest break from Indian food after travelling. I also want to learn to make "butter chicken" my new favorite Indian dish- its sort of like chicken tikka masala, but I guess more authentic. (Chicken Tikka Masala is technically a British dish, invented by a Bangladeshi in London in the 1970's).

Not much else of note in Udaipur- though would highly recommend it. We saw a few other Havelis, browsed the antique stores, and each had a mild run in with a cow. (Head-butted from the rear- a little scarier than it sounds and has now sadly diminished the trust and admiration between us and our otherwise adorable (and ubiquitous) bovine friends.

Returned to Delhi yesterday morning to the hotel royal (seemed a more promising name than the "hotel decent" on the same street.) Spent the day wandering around dazed in the heat and smog again and not really accomplishing much. Visited and were mildly disappointed by Fabindia, and the Khan market- though the latter had an excellent bookstore (Full Circle) that I would highly recommend for books or just escaping hellish delhi, at which we spent a long time browsing the books.

Oh, so more again about food. For the past year we lived right by and walked past the Craigie Street Bistro every day. Outside there was a sign posted from Food and Wine magazine which had rated the 10 best restaurants in the world to eat meat. Our Craigie Street Bistro was named #2. The number one spot was reserved for a restaurant called Bukhara in Delhi. Well, finally, we made it to Bukhara in Delhi, though it was different than we would have expected. First of all, its in a big ex-sheraton hotel that looks like a horrible compound of bunkers (not unlike hi-rise and lo-rise to drop the Wesleyan reference). The restaurant itself has decor that is rather like Flintstones-meets-Genghis-Khan if you can imagine it- stone walls, and bizarre tables and seats made out of tree stumps. And no silverware. However, true to its reputation the meat (lamb kebabs) was amazingly tender and piping hot off the grill/tandoor. An amazing bread stuffed with spiced onions that I'd never encoutnered before, and a wonderful dessert that we had been seeking but didnt know the name of (rasmulai- paneer soaked in rosewater basically).

And this morning, Olivia jetted off to London, and I remain here...
I was supposed to go to Srinagar this morning bright and early, but when I got to the airport this morning I read that an IED had blown up a bus of soldiers on one of the highways outside of town. Freaking out, I found another newspaper, that mentioned a different attack on a different highway the day before that one. Figuring that although I had been planning to take the OTHER of the three highways from Srinagar to Leh, I might want to reconsider. Changing flights was a huge and humiliating hassle, but I'm now heading directly to Leh in Ladakh tomorrow. I like my Himalayan adventures peaceful and shangri-la like. So I headed back to Delhi feeling like a bit of a wuss, but you know, I'm a grown-up who makes responsible decisions and now has things in my life worth living for.

The only problem was that a tuktuk drove me halfway to delhi and then insisted I take a taxi and pay them more. Enormous argument ensues with exhausted and sleepless me marching down the highway back toward Indira Ghandi International Airport, with now dozens of taxis stopping to fight over who got to drive me to Delhi and holding up rush hour delhi traffic. MAde it back to the hotel safely, and tried to relax and ponder what on earth I'd do in Delhi. Little was open as its Sunday, so more aimless wandering and time at cafe coffee day drinking my iced eskimo (like a tropical holiday on mt everest! - actual description) and reading my crappy backpacker novel until I was politely asked to make room for other customer.

Standing around in the punishing humidity, some Indian guys (call center yuppies sporting Benneton shirts and Gucci sunglasses) started talking to me. I told them I bailed on Srinagar and they were so upset with me, as if I'd insulted them. But there were bombs on two of the three highways in two days! I tried to explain. No no! Srinigar its like heaven, you must change again and go back to airport, you miss the most beautiful place in the world! It is heaven, it is heaven!!! When I said Americans were not very popular in the world these days they just retorted ad nauseum They can kill so many Americans in Iraq and Afghan, here they only want to kill Indian army, not tourist! In spite of their generous offers to use their fancy phones to immediately re-change my tickets I remained unconvinced, and even more difficult was trying to polite decline an offer of taking coffee with them. Although had I felt better, hanging out with Indian yuppies would have been an amazing cultural experience, I just wanted to be alone and not have my masculinity questioned by a bunch of Indian dudes in tight Bennetton shirts.

So, attempting that, I foolishly sat in a park until a funny little turbaned man approached and started chatting with me about ear hygiene. He showed me a little notebook of lukewarm testimonials from tourists, along with photos of himself cleaning the ears of various dutch, english and japanese travellers in the park and simply would not go away. He eventually started even looking in my ears and tsking and exclaiming "oh my god! So dirty!!" and tried to get his q-tip in until I had to walk away. Ambled my way back to the hotel and rested, past junkies literally laying in the gutter to the quiet of my hotel room where I watched the indian news, amusingly entitled "Weekend Update."