Despite my unabashed disgust with how Inda treats its budget tourists, and its 20-something female tourists, the friendliness of certain people has been beyond reproach. Of those amazing few lifesavers, nobody has been as eager to discuss daily life more than Shashi Parihar.
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I give up. Rajasthani germs win. I’m sick, again.

This time, it’s some kind of searing gut pain that makes me lose my footing with each attack. I was sparring once in a tournament, and took a kick to the leg that made me nauseous; this is worse. There’s no nausea, but a fire that feels like my stomach is burning itself out from the inside, like melting celluloid. Later I would get some medical advice and take stomach acid-dampening pills, but until then I would bear the dilapidated elegance of the Bundi Palace on a wobbly cross.
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The best budget places to stay in Rajasthan have been the paying guesthouses. Besides treating their customers as human, instead of preambulating cash dispensers, the owners of these establishments have been invariably friendly to a fault and occasionally have offered up unique perks.

Like shopping trips.
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India’s stereotypical reputation as a breeding ground for serene gurus is well-deserved. Like no other place I’ve been to or read about, the sub-continent excels at teaching patience. Although you may think it’s all quaint camel-drawn carts and James Bondesque flying rickshaws, let me set you straight: it ain’t.
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There are many great things to see in Udaipur, or so I’ve been told.

I was not impressed with the City Palace, where disastrous planning stuck more than two dozen useful information boards on the history of the palace, the efforts made to restore it, the history of the city and a recap of traditional Rajasthani culture at the end of the tour in a poorly marked side room.

Neither was I particularly taken with the pretty Lake Palace, an expensive hotel and restaurant which sits in the middle of the city’s manmade lake, Pichola. The sunset views from the Monsoon Palace, atop a small mountain visible from the city, were indeed beautiful, but overwhelmingly so.

No, I was most impressed by the cows. Huge, lumbering Brahmin cows bolting up the narrow streets and hills of Udaipur at full sprint, galloping into the evening sun. That, and a bit of painted nudity.
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The Pink City of Jaipur was clearly not pink. If anything, the buildings of its old city were painted a faint salmonesque color, hard to distinguish from white in the glare of the desert.

The Blue City of Jodhpur, on the other hand, was as blue as a robin’s egg. The old city there looked like something Picasso might have done had he written a fantasy novel, the square-edged rectangular houses stretching vertically, all the shade of a late morning sky.
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The biggest concern when it comes to camel safaris has to be the stink. Camels are simply not known for being the “after” candidates in deodorant ads. Shocking, I know, but there it is: the dromedary has repugnently horrendous odoriferous emanations.
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