Last day- Mumbai

We really had an interesting half day tour. It started with the army and navy headquarters, remnants of the British.  Moved on to the dhobi washer area. All men. Pounding and scrubbing away.  

Moved on to a traditional fishing village that is right in the middle of a very posh residential area 

These guys at on a poor man's paddle board, a net filled with styrofoam. It's a way to get out to your boat...

This is Victoria station a reported 5 million people move through here every day. I can just imagine the Brits arriving by ship and taking the train out to the wilds of India from here.

The hanging gardens feature high on my  favorites list, lovely, cool and peaceful. 

There was a group of very small children having their lunch in the gazebo, sandwiches and potato chips on paper plates.

These are the non fishing pleasure boats in the bay. 

After a visit to the Gandhi museum and lunch at Leopold's cafe, a fixture since 1871 we walked back to our hotel and are sitting by the pool sipping drinks to kill time before catching our 3 am flight.

Udaipur

After a really, really long drive ( 9 hours) we arrived at the Chundra Palace Hotel.

Beautifully decorated 

With an indoor pool

And an outdoor pool

And a lovely lake view from the roof top terrace.

This is as close as we came to tigers. The carvings represent the negative things one should leave behind when you enter the temple. The hari krisnas were there chanting away.

The Maharani of Udaipur has a huge palace. The family lives in part of it. They have two hotels, a school, a great museum and really nice shops. They have no political power but have buckets of money. They were prepping for a big wedding, another money making source.

 

We finally figured out to tell the tour guide we didn't need to need to see everything on the list but wanted to spend more time in one place. Woohoo! 

We had a great boat ride in the afternoon. This is another wedding venue- mid lake. 

Local color

We had it with safari rides and got to go native and check out the local town.  Here is a cow being fed on the stairs of this house by a little boy. Mostly the cows and pigs eat garbage on the street.

We visited a school where had a tour. 

The children performed for us and we taught them head shoulders, knees and toes. Good time was had by all.

We hit the local market where stores are separated by kind- the hardware stores, cigarette makers, fruits and vegetables etc. Misty and Cathy needed to buy more bangles, I bought fabric, Ellyn bought scarves.

Misty bought cough medicine at the chemist.

This was the highlight of the tour- a snooty camel pulling a cart. They were all over the place.

Tiger, tiger

We came to Rathambhore National Park to see tigers in the wild. We went out by jeep early in morning and again in tje afternoon with out any luck. We get another chance tomorrow.  We're staying at Abrar Palace and Jungle Camp- a home in the wild. It's a wonderful oasis of clean air, trees and lawns. We have out meals in a tent 

Or outside

There is entertainment in the evening

The park was the. Maharaja's hunting grounds. Queen Elizabeth shot 2 tigers here in the early 60s. You drive single file through these great gates.

We saw peacocks all over as well asYellow wagtail, Red tail Lapwing, Parquet, Egret,Kingfisher 

The big score but no photo was a Leopard 

Crocodiles

Wild boars

Monkeys

Several varieties of deer, antelope and elk

Much fun but hard work rattling around in the jeep. We didn't see any tigers but we did see paw prints about 6 inches in diameter. And some people heard the tiger roar. Beautiful scenery and a lovely place to be.

Crafty things

We have been to a government sponsored handicraft shop in every town. We went to a handmade paper factory in Pune (sorry no photos) 

Silk factory in Varanasi

Kashmiri handicrafts in Delhi, .

And yes I bought a very small rug.

In Jaipur it was gems - no purchases

The hand stamped fabrics- before

After

purchases were made

Sanganer for pottery

My haul sent by DHL

Too much fun and we are done.

Maybe.

Cooking Jaipur

We had a cooking class in Jaipur, outside in a lovely garden. 

The food that was prepared was really delicious. Potatoes with cumin, Dal panchratna, rice and vegetables. Unfortunately that was not what was served for lunch. It was very disappointing.

But the next day we went to a restaurant called Indiana that was great and they have us a tour of the kitchen. They had a wood burning tandoori oven that our shish  kabob was cooked in.

Bread, formed without a rolling  pin just like pizza dough,

And slapped on the side of the oven. How cool is that?

One section of the kitchen is for Indian food, one for Chinese food and one for continental food. 

Here is thespice box and Indian herbs.

The food was terrific and more than made up for the day before.

Forts and Palaces

We started in Agra at the Agra fort moved on to Fatehpur Sikri. In Jaipur we did a whirlwind tour of the Palace of the Winds, Amber Fort and the City Palace with observatory. I can't tell the pictures apart but the architecture is amazing. Most of the forts are really palace complexes except Fatehpur Sikri which was a whole city abandoned when the water supply dried up. We did get an elephant ride to the Amber Fort.