Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Pancakes in Udaipur




Independent Student Travel was quite an adventure! Julia, Katie, and I went to Udaipur for the weekend and it ended up being possibly my favorite place so far.
The weekend didn't start out so great, though... it actually started out with what was probably the most miserable night of my life. It was traumatizing. We took an overnight train and the horror of that night will never be forgotten. First our train was delayed by like 3 hours until 12:30 AM so we just hung out at the train station waiting. Basically the train was just extremely uncomfortable and REALLY REALLY cold. There were these 3-bunk-beds with really small little pad things on them. It was too small for me to curl up so I struggled to retain body heat and by the time we arrived in Udaipur the next morning my whole lower body was ACHING with the cold. I was basically convulsing with shivers and could see my breath and hadn't moved for the whole ride because I didn't want to change positions and touch a cold part of the mattress pad. I was very concerned about frostbite.

So after that eventful night, it was kind of an out of body experience when the three of us arrived at our hotel which was SO nice and sat down at the rooftop restaurant in the sunlight and ordered - surprise - chocolate pancakes! I have been dreaming about pancakes for a couple weeks now so that was perfect. Slowly I began to believe that this might be a world where I could be happy again. And sure enough, the next couple days were amazing.
We ordered chocolate pancakes every morning (and possibly for lunch one afternoon though you can't prove that). We wandered around Udaipur browsing the markets and buying random souvenirs that I don't really need. We stopped in to many rooftop cafes with beautiful views of the famous Udaipur lake. I mentioned in the last post that a James Bond movie was filmed in Udaipur and pretty much every restaurant claimed to be playing it in the evening but no one ever played it. It was OK though because the food was so good. We tried to visit the City Palace but didn't want to give our cameras to the security people so we just viewed it from the outside. We thoroughly enjoyed our hotel which had comfy beds, a real shower with warm water, AND hbo on TV. It was a very relaxing, scenic weekend. Perfect in every way minus the death train.

In other news, my beginners group at the computer class has moved from mastering control of the mouse to inserting tables into microsoft word. I'm very proud. This is a picture of Asha and me - she is one of my new students who loves the camera.

Hope everyone is doing well!

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