Udaipur, IN (week 4)

Last Saturday, Dan and I took a tuk tuk and rickshaw to the Udaipur ropeway. We were hoping to get to the top for some sunset shots, but our plans were thwarted by an hour long queue in boarding the gondola cars. But this was no surprise, since only 2 cars were available for each trip, carrying about 12-15 passengers each time, and each trip took about 4 minutes before the next load. When we got to the top, we may not have witnessed the sunset, but the city view at night was just as beautiful, especially with just a small sliver of a crescent moon in the sky.

On Sunday, we found ourselves with new company from the United states, Alex (from Washington DC) and Jennifer (from Georgia – which by the way now has Ray Charles’ “Georgia” perpetually stuck in my head). They both have arrived as part of a different NGO and are using Samvit’s homestay, Chandra Niwas. While Alex, a pre-med student, is here for a 1 month internship, Jennifer is here to volunteer, but both are here for a program that involves studying local plants for alternative medicinal uses.

Sunday evening, while they were off doing their own thing, Samvit took Dan and I to Shilpgram, a “village” where rural artisans display their wares.

It’s a purpose-built location just outside of a couple of resorts, so authenticity runs pretty low, but there is still some nice crafty-work there. I bought a lovely scarf, and walked away from a very nice (but overpriced) bedsheet. Samvit dropped us off at Hati Pole, where there are some more shops, and we made plans to meet later at Bagore Ki Haveli, where a demonstration of traditional Rajathani dances is performed nightly. On our way there I picked up a more reasonably priced “sheet” – the sheets in these shops look more like art pieces – that we will use at home for a wall hanging. We navigated our way through the Old City and arrived at Bagore Ki Haveli just in time for the show.

Here we watched a performance made up of several traditional Rajasthani dances.

One dance had these women with cymbals on their arms, legs and heads and they would ‘strike’ each cymbal with another that they swung around on a string. Another had a guy picking up hot coal with his mouth. And another had a woman balance a huge tower of water jugs on her head – at one point she also stood on broken glass!

Later on in the evening, we met up with Alex and Jennifer to try out a restaurant that Samvit had promised Dan would be a place that served VERY spicy food. They ordered the Dam Aloo and it met Dan’s high expecatitions.

Our last week in Udaipur had Dan and I going to both centers, to spend as much time with the kids as possible. In the morning we would go to Badgaon Village to assist the teacher there, and then we would go to Havala Village to teach our lesson plan for that day. Our last day with the kids, we planned for a Games and Competition day, so the night before, we made our last trip to Big Bazaar. Since Alex & Jennifer had not yet been, the four of us went together around 9:00pm.

While at the store, Dan and I stocked up on prizes and gifts that we got for: Perfect Attendance, Most sincere kids (2 boys, 2 girls), Most Improved and Best Line Monitors. We then took a tuk tuk home where, we squeezed ourselves into an already full vechicle – that even the Indian ladies were laughing. Dan and Alex were folded over and at one point Alex found his grocery bag on a lady’s lap, because he had just tossed the bag in. It was quite amusing, because only until later did Alex realize that he had put his bag on this lady’s lap. We teased him that he was giving her a gift.

The last day with the kids was a lot of fun. We got to sing with the children one last time in Badgaon and in Havala, we played a game where I would yell ‘head’, and the kids would have to touch their head…etc. We also played ‘body part BINGO’. So, if I called out nose, they would circle the picture of a nose on their BINGO cards. In the evening, we had our last dinner with Sam in the Old City and were surprised to witness a motorbike accident. Luckily the driver wasn’t hurt, but the passenger seemed to have injured his knee pretty badly. They refused to have an ambulance come over and before we knew it, they wrapped the guy’s knee with a bandana, got back on the the bike that just crashed and drove off, saying that they would go to the hospital themselves. Crazy!

Thursday was the day of of our train departure, so we spent most of it packing and ensuring that I’ve moved all the resource materials that I’ve collected and organized for Samvit onto his computer. We also visited with Savmit’s sister and neice, who had just arrived from America. Sam wanted us to go back to Havala so that we could say one last good-bye.

We took some quick photos and were given a whole pile of cards and drawings – it was very thoughtful and we appreciated that they took the time to do it. We went back home to pack up the car, but not before a tearful good-bye to the family.

We arrived at the Udaipur station with 10 minutes to spare before our train departure and were very impressed with our train cabin.

We were lucky enough to have a private cabin with a two-tier berth, so this made for a really comfortable 12 hour ride. There were guys who would go up and down the trains yelling, ‘Pani, cold drinks’ or ‘Tomato Soup’ or ‘Cutlets’. We tried our luck with the tomato soup, which was fantastic. Our dinner was good too, with Daal, rice, and Channa, Aloo curry. There was also chapati, but it didn’t taste as good as what we would get at Samvit’s place. As evening settled in, so did we. We closed our cabin door, laid out our linens and slept until morning.