Seeing the Sites in Udaipur
After lunch, we decide to go out and sight see. We get a Rickshaw and make our first stop at Sukhadta Circle. This is a beautiful round park with a small lake and the biggest three tiered fountain that I have ever seen! Swan shaped pedal boats full of couples and children surround the fountain. Children play in the park and families picnic. A marionette show is in progress toward the back of the park and vendors are selling goods. Camel rides are available around the park.
Next we go to the Sahelin-Ki-Bari or Maiden’s Park. This is a beautiful park with water features built in the 1700’s for the 48 girls that the Maharana received as part of her dowry.
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We leave the gardens and pass Fateh Sagar Lake and go to see the Moti Magri Pratep Memorial. This is a beautiful hilltop park and museum dedicated to the warrior who defended the kingdom of Mewar against Akbar in the 1500’s.
We come back to the hotel and the men decide to try something besides the hotel restaurant for dinner. There is a “restaurant” next door. It consists of a room approximately 12x12 with 3 tables and a sink for customers to wash hands in the back. We sit down and the waiter comes up. Then, for the first time since Shank and I have been together, he meets someone that he can’t communicate with. The waiter speaks only Merwathi. No Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali, English, etc., etc. Finally, Shank and Aba manage to convey that we want three meals. We wait in silent anticipation wondering what we have ordered.
The food arrives. Each metal plate is a Thali size plate. For those of you unfamiliar with Thali, it is an all you can eat vegetarian meal. The plates are metal and the size of a pizza pan. Tonight, each plate has 2 small stainless steel bowls. One bowl has samba, a tomato based soup. The second is kadhi; white chickpea flour based soup that is reminiscent of cream of potato. The unusual part though is the main part of the dinner. It looks like graham crackers that have been crushed up and dumped in a pile! This is the entire meal. We observe the people next to us spooning the soup on to the pile and then eating it. We follow suit. It is surprisingly good! The waiter then brings a bowl with what appears to be wet sand. It has the consistency of sand but it is sweet. With some melted butter and a pie plate, I could have made a graham cracker crust! We walk back to the hotel and get ready for tomorrow.
