Thankfully, the left-handed handshake never caught on...

We took a MUCH better (read: less crowded) bus to the small town of Udaipur. This town is famous for three reasons: 1) It was never conquered; 2) it is the home of India's famous "miniature painting" artists; 3) a large part of the 007 flick "Octopussy" was filmed here. Immediately, we took a liking to the city. It was fairly small, and had a great bohemian vibe thanks to all of the artists living there. In the middle of Udaipur is a large lake that has a palace in the middle, and you can see the now abandoned Monsoon Palace high on a hilltop (the glamorous version in the film was quite an exaggeration - we watched the film at one of the restaurants!). The monsoon palace, when we went up there to see a sunset, was swarming with alarmingly large monkeys. I took an (unauthorized?) trip up the dark staircase of the abandoned and empty palace and looked out over the city.... it was a great experience... just me and the crazy pigeons that lived in the roof (see pic of me in one of the doorways). The other pic below is of the steps leading to the lake... they were constantly occupied by women who, despite India's supposedly modest culture, bathed openly, socialized in the water, and beat the crap out of their laundry every day.

Our guide Chandra knew many people in Udaipur, and introduced us to a local artist named Sanju. He was a master artist in miniature paintings, and the stereotypical "artist-type" - long suffering, moody, funny, drank too much, inflated ego, eager to talk about his art. He invited us to a "rum party" that night, where Sam, Anjli, Chandra, Mars, and I all sat around and relaxed while he poured us very strong Indian rum. He got bored and offered to give us henna tattoos on our hands, which ended up turning out beautifully, and of a much better quality than the ones that some other members of our group paid to have done elsewhere. The next day we returned to Sanju's shop to take a painting class from him. He was apparently not in the mood to grace us with his presence before noon, so another artist named Suresh instructed us instead. I have never before been instructed on how to complete a new task with so few words! He asked us what we wanted to paint, then he went through each step simply by doing his work on one side of the paper and having us copy his work on the other side: pencil sketch, broad painting, outline, fine detail... all done with less than 10 words uttered. Despite his unconventional approach, we all actually did WAY better than I thought we would. I painted an elephant and Mars did a peacock and they looked ok... until you compared them to the real artists work on the other side of the page!

The next day we did a quick tour of the City Palace in the morning (the Lake Palace is now a 5-star hotel that you can't get to unless you are a guest) and then met up with Sanju again. Anjli, Mars, Chandra and I all piled into a tiny little car and set off on the "Sanju Local Tour Around Udaipur". He drove like a maniac, swerving around cows and cars alike with uncanny precision. He assured us that you only need three things to be a successful driver in India: good horn, good brakes, and good luck! Our first stop was for lunch at a guest house that was run by Sanju's friend. As you can see from the photo, we were basically in the middle of a field on the side of a rarely used dirt road... first stop, very local indeed, but the dal we had there was delicious and we got another chance to master the Indian art of eating your entire meal with only your right hand (they don't use utensils, and the left hand is not used because it is a well known fact that the left hand is used for bum wiping. Seriously.) After lunch, we went to the largest man-made lake in Asia. There were deserted palaces all around it and royalty used to sit on the steps there to watch water games. We all tried to climb on the marble elephant (see photo) but only Chandra took the leap... literally... and mounted it from jumping off a ledge. The locals found the whole scene hilarious. Our last stop on the tour was an erotic temple in the middle of a small village. Unlike all of the other temples we've seen in India, this one was completely deserted. We just wandered in through the open gate and admired the beautiful kama sutra sculptures that were carved into every inch of the temple.... some were pretty racy and all of the goddess figures had massive tatas! It was quite a unique experience to be at a temple like this one that you know almost no other tourists had visited. While we were exploring the temple grounds, we realized that all of the walls surrounding the temples were covered with menacing looking monkeys... and three local boys wandered in to gawk at the foreigners and scare away the monkeys for us. They posed for photos with us and were really funny, so we went to buy them some candy from the local sweets hut when we left. As we were picking out the candy and some pencils for the boys, we turned around to realize that we were surrounded by a sea of local village children who knew exactly what we were up to. We each spent the equivalent of about $0.50 CDN and were able to give each kid some candy... they could have stood there all day with us taking photos and then looking at their images... even the lady with the bucket on her head was amused!

With our great local tour coming to and end, we were talking in the car about wanting to get dressed up in saris to go out for a nice evening. Of course, Sanju took us directly to his friend's shop, where we rented out beautiful saris for $1 each! Thankfully, Anjli knew how to assemble us all in our saris. It was quite a production, and it took her about 15 minutes per person to get us each into out outfits and bhindis... the saris are just one large 6 foot piece of fabric that has to be wrapped and folded and pleated in a million places. The Indian women make the garment look so elegant, but we struggled to even walk without tripping on the thing or looking hideously awkward. Piling into a tiny rickshaw in our saris, we went to a great restaurant that was right on the lake and had a beautiful view of the palace at night. Every local we encountered was endlessly amused at seeing foreign girls in sairs, and the usual staring increased ten-fold. The funniest thing about it was that MULTIPLE people at different times told Mars that she looked Indian! Guess she pulls off a sari better than the rest of us... maybe she could pass as a local when we need a better taxi price! hehe. Other people thought we worked in India and that's why we had access to traditional dresses. It was a really fun night, but a bit daunting at the end trying very un-gracefully to untangle myself from the fabric before bed :)

And then, the next morning we said goodbye to Udaipur, and... you guessed it... boarded a stiflingly hot train en route to the Holy City of Pushkar....