This morning after breakfast we left
Udaipur. We had very little sleep last night as the street/stray
dogs of Udaipur started barking and howling around 1am and kept it up
throughout the early hours. We probably got less than 3 hours sleep
and weren't at our best today.
We'd asked the hotel to book us a car
for the drive to Chanoud Garh which we anticipated would take around
3.5 hours. The taxi was very old. No seatbelts and kna**ered
suspension and the journey was over some very rough rural roads so
David wasn't a happy bunny as he jolted his back quite badly on a
couple of the larger bumps.
The driver didn't speak more than a
couple of words of English so I concentrated on the scenery. I
always find the roads fascinating with its mix of human and animal
traffic – lots of hooters blaring (not in anger, more to let other
road users know of your position/intent to overtake). David loves
driving but he says he'd never drive in India.
The roads were very bumpy and I was
sitting in the back seat trying to take photos through the front
windscreen - most of my photos were so awful they've been deleted
now but here's a few as a reminder to us of the journey. A few
are taken through the side window whilst we were sat in traffic.
 | |||||
| Any side of the road will do |
4 to a motorcycle is common on the roads here (and no helmets)!
We stopped after a couple of hours to
have chai at a small hotel with gardens overlooking a lovely valley
with lots of squirrels and birds. An egret I startled …
and a
couple of the puppies dozing in the gardens. They were very cute
and I hate to think they'll grow up as strays and cause the sort of
nuisance we experienced last night.
The wiring as usual is extremely suspect, it's amazing they aren't all fried to a cinder. I wonder how the ladies carrying the hay know where they're going as visibility seems non-existent.
ReplyDeleteWell, as I'm replying to these comments retrospectively I can now tell you that the wiring in Jodhpur is 100x worse than in Udaipur. It is pretty amazing they don't have nasty fires in these towns.
ReplyDeleteYes the ladies are overburdened but they always seem to cope - years of practice I guess. We didn't see any fall flat on their faces anyway ...
As i look your pics I feel we could easily swap photos :) Thats what I do when I am traving taking pics like these --and these are really lovely !
ReplyDelete