Udaipur and Ahmedabad

It wasn’t a great start to a new city. Having finally arrived at the hotel the staff didn’t really seem to be expecting us. A handful of polite and helpful staff made ready a room for us. But unfortunately, it was the worst hotel room I have ever booked into. It seems that the Indian ‘Fab Hotels’ chain may have to be reported to the Indian version of the advertising standards authority, purely based on their name.

A very long day on a bus and a tuk-tuk transfer, saw us arrive at our rather grim room. Everything dripped or wobbled.

We had a nap and then on the advice of Google Maps went out for a rather soulless solitary meal. Not only was the area devoid of any tourist activity but we also appear to have chosen a rather quiet end of the city to base ourselves. It was hard to ascertain the vibe of this new and yet undiscovered city. Decided that our booking was only for two nights, and of course, we could cope with that. We focused on planning tomorrow, and the new city we had to explore.

In the morning we started with a Tuk Tuk ride in to the historic area of the town. A cable car ride which took us up to a viewpoint over the town. Grabbing a coffee and a sandwich for breakfast at the barely open restaurant at the top of the hill. We then descended and headed to the lake to take a trip around in a municipal boat. This gave us a different view of the town and the main sites of the city. Although most of them now appear to be Premium hotels.

Later that morning we made our way to the impressive fort. Much extended over the dynasties. We were disappointed that we couldn’t find a way to reach it via the river path.

It wasn’t a patch on the Jodhpur fort but it amused and entertained us for a few hours.

You couldn’t also help but be amused by the swarms of kids who now seem to spend their time wanting to be social media influencers. We watched numerous individuals making various videos, although there was probably little remarkable or interesting about their lives.

We continued to have people ask to have their photo taken with us. Remaining good honoured – despite both having horrible colds. We were living on Ginger, honey and lemon tea. We smiled through hundreds of photographs.

It was an extraordinarily hot day. But we still decided to walk back to the hotel through the park. Eventually, we found ourselves on a main road with a supermarket and a Domino’s Pizza. Not wishing to repeat the soulless meal of the previous night we had pizza for tea. Something which we are not proud of, and we resolved to be better people in the future.

We left Udaipur at ‘silly o’clock the next morning. From what appeared to be a rather unremarkable point on the side of a very busy highway. We are becoming used to finding unmarked points on roads which the locals concur are bus stops. The bus always turns up, which is just as well as we never have a PlanB. Breakfast on these occasions often consisted of wraps of newspaper containing Poha, A flattened rice dish with peanuts which is always welcome and delicious.

We were heading to Mumbai. The journey was exceptionally long on a map. So we decided to break it in a place we had literally just chosen on a map called Ahmedabad. We had work to catch up and we had an overnight train from Mumbai to Goa but this wasn’t for some days yet. We found ourselves not relishing the idea of spending a week in Mumbai so we decided to stop travelling and explore somewhere random.

So many hours after the Poha on the side of the road we were deposited in the centre of Ahmedabad.

The hotel we chose turned out to be the best one so far, A bit like the UK Premier Inn chain with a fabulous restaurant in-house. It also was at access gate 5 of Kankaria Park which turned out to be a veritable park of wonders for just 10 rupees to get in.

Circular in design the huge lake in the centre of the complex was also the site for the nightly laser light show. Around the circumference, a pedestrian walkway with fast food stalls also was home to a Miserable Zoo, a much better nocturnal zoo, a butterfly house and an aquarium. Housing loads of other family-based activities, this place must be such a hub of the cities activity in the summer.

Ahmedabad also was home to an amazing underground step well, which we ventured out to via a Tuk Tuk and a driver who was happy to wait for us to view the free site and return us back to the hotel. The Stepwell was amazing because it was enclosed and therefore underground. The water levels much reduced you were able to walk around the tanks and up and down the levels without resorting to using the stone spiral staircases which appeared to have become homes to colonies of bats