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On the bus the sparse hills and vegetation of what I would call desert badlands gave way to real desert. Soil gave way to sand, trees to cactus. Temperatures rose and humidity diminished. After about two hours the bus stopped for tea. I wanted breakfast but it looked like tea and “biscuits” (prepackaged cookies) and dubious pre-fried items sitting in a sweaty case were all that was on offer. I bought some potato chips instead. To this day finding nutritious and safe food continues to be a challenge in India. So many people survive here on watery dal, piles of carbs, sugar, fried flour and tea. This, as well as having a way to boil water for drinking, is why I traveled with a mini electric tea kettle to cook veggies in.

At this rest stop I had my first experience using a pay toilet. Here I was asked “1-Urine?” first and then, “2-Toilet?” The latter offer was ten rupees and not a pleasant experience. But it was not the worst of my Indian toilet adventures. I hurried back on the bus, concerned about having left my big pack on the roof for anyone to peruse. The guidebooks always say to always keep an eye on your luggage. But this is not always possible. And the effort was just empowerment of fear. Before I stepped up into the bus I saw a corner of my pack sticking out from the considerable pile on the roof rack. It had not been disturbed. In my experience, sooner or later one just has to trust the people around. In time one develops a sense, immediately upon entering a scene, whether or not one's guard can be let down.

In a few more hours the next stop was a rest stop offering channa masala and fried puri… and tea of course. I went for those options as I needed fuel so badly it felt worth risking the squirts or worse. The hot food hit the spot. Sitting at my table I was approached by some young Indian men on their own bus-tour of Rajasthan. This was one of those instances of meeting people generally thrilled to meet me. They were overly respectful and did not stick their phone camera in my face. We talked a bit and posed for a few selfies.Then the bus was off again. It took only another hour and a half to reach Udaipur. I had anticipated the town quite a lot of excitement. It is heavily visited by tourists and claimed by many bloggers and youtubers as being one of their favorites. One corny blog comes to mind, the author gushing how Udaipur is "to die for." It's true the town was pleasing to the eye. This was my first glimpse of architecture in Rajasthan. I don’t know the technical terms for all the features of the buildings but their style was characteristically different from any I had seen.

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There was an ornateness to the structures, with much more attention given to detail and extra forms than any Indian structures I had seen. Many were accented by huge doors and a series of arches and framed window sills (I forgot the architectural terms). Many of the buildings were stacked on top of each other in a sort of house cards style, but much more stable. These were all painted in weathered, light colors of vanilla, yellow, chartreuse, aqua blue, pink and sandy variants of orange. The colors and the light reflection from the surrounding lakes gave the city the sort of glow that one might find in a coastal community, minus the mist. Udaipur sits along at least one large lake with a series of canals and bridges dividing the city. It is a really photogenic city. That said, it’s interesting how the glossy images on postcards and google maps do not show the plastic trash bobbing about or how polluted the water is. What else is new. Still, Udaipur is perhaps the most beautiful city I have seen in India.

I walked from the bus station a bit and was approached by a Sikh rickshaw driver, Mr. Singh. He was a jolly, turbaned man with a large waxed mustache- a classic Rajasthani look. I had not yet learned to ignore those that approach me. I sensed that I could trust him and hopped into his rickshaw. He had a few suggestions for guesthouses and going against my rule I allowed him to take me. He tore off up a narrow road closely flanked by buildings with retail on the street level and residences or other spaces in the floors above. These multiple-story buildings, the narrow streets and the steady uphill trajectory of the road created the feeling that I was in a dense city. As far as I was concerned I was. Higher up the road we came into more of the center of town. There was a city palace and a museum, a few temples and shops and guesthouses catering to the tourists. For being in such a wide open desert landscape the town felt tightly cramped. We continued over the rise of the road and back down the other side where we followed one of the canals for a while. We stopped at an unfinished and impoverished guesthouse that I was sort of glad to learn was all booked. Then we backtracked to the center of town and I was shown a slightly more expensive room in a turquoise, multi-storied affair. I took it and paid Mr. Singh for his services. He puttered off on his way.

The stairs up the guesthouse were steep and somewhat treacherous. They reminded me just a little of the extremely steep and shallow staircases at an apartment I had stayed at in Holland. Here in Udaipur, up the fourth flight of these intense stairs was a rooftop restaurant that offered views of the city and the lake and mountains in the distance. Only a stone’s throw from there were the rooftop restaurants of the neighboring hotels. There I could see other foreigners lounging under the overhangs shielding them from the hot sun. Apparently Rajasthan’s tourist season is short due to the intense heat that comes after March. It was the beginning of February at the time and so temperatures were still relatively cool. But the weathered buildings seemed to show the stress of the intense desert sun. Perhaps these buildings were not painted pastel colors at all. Perhaps they had been bleached to their pastel tones by the burning desert sun.

I allowed myself a few days to wander around Udaipur without any official tourist stops. I got to know an older British woman saying at the hotel. She, like almost all the British I encounter in India, was cheery and friendly and experienced in traveling the area. We sat on the rooftop restaurant, me under the umbrella and her basking to a deep tan in the desert sun. She was volunteering at a nearby animal shelter of sorts. Apparently she only traveled to do these sort of volunteering stints. I think the last one she went to was in Thailand. I continually reached a sort of barrier that this woman put up, where her interest in interacting had ended and she went off on her own. I could relate to this.

Once you are accustomed to your own company, accommodating others can be a lot of work. But I noted something else. She was on this trip away from her husband and family in the UK. She told me that she was bipolar and that “I might seem normal now but people think something different when they see me crying in the corner of my room.” I didn’t know how to respond to this. I asked about the animal shelter and the safety of touching the animals. What was on my mind was the guidebooks cautioning against touching animals as diseases are easily spread. Her response to this was , “I have scabies!" pause..."I probably shouldn’t have told you that.” So I gave this woman the space she wanted, and what I thought would be good for me, and declined her offer to visit the animal sanctuary. We still enjoyed a few beers on the rooftop and some light chatter.

The next day I took Mr. Singh up on his offer of a rickshaw tour of the city. On the way we picked up two Canadian tourists as a way to cut down on the cost of the tour. They were good company. We stopped beside a lake with a spectacular view. A man with a camel walked by and I took a picture. He then asked me for money for taking the shot. I was a little taken aback. Then we went to a garden on the tourist map that proved to be a little disappointing. Then we stopped at a complex of Tombs that the Canadians and I could not seem to find the entrance to. We learned that it was essentially off limits to tourists. I wondered why Mr. Singh had taken us there. We had lunch together and then were to head back toward the center of town to see a park and a few other sights. We visited the park, which offered a nice, rural experience in the shade of trees in the middle of the city. A pack of monkeys blocked our path but then moved on into the trees. The park was vast and the Canadians and I soon got a bit lost and tired of the hike.

In some time we got back into the rickshaw to go view some architecture. However, in the middle of the journey Mr. Singh pulled over. Unbeknownst to me he had brokered a side deal with the Canadians to help them change money and do some other things. The fact that he had not told me chafed at me. I did a "no no" and lost my cool right then and there. I angrily asked him what we were doing and asked why he had not told me of this. He was evasive, his nonverbal response sort of saying, “What’s the big deal?” There probably wasn’t one, I was just tired and did the unthinkable thing of voicing one's anger openly in Asia. But my experience is that eventually, one loses it due to the chaos, the hassles, the hustles and general sensory overload that can be India. Mr. Singh took me back to my hotel and traveled on with the Canadians.

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What was probably behind my explosion was being on the road for over four months and still struggling with what had transpired in Kovalam. More primarily, my quest to see the sights after the devastating disappointment of not finding what I had sought in Bodh Gaya was turning out to be very shallow and empty. The journey seemed to be scattering my soul. I had come to India to be a part of something, not to be a wandering tourist. And I was on the move every week, to a new place for a spell and then on again. I struggled with not having a purpose on my journey. I struggled with being the lone, anonymous alien wherever I went. It was even awkward in circles of western tourists, who were usually paired up in couples or groups of friends. Ah, matters of the heart and the journey of the soul are not social endeavors. I was clearly still in the middle of that process. Perhaps I always will be.

Anyways, just going out to check off “must see” stops on the tourist trail had always brought me stress and never the promised satisfaction. In Kerala, Karnataka and now here in Rajasthan, I was following the herd, not exploring. And when you are traveling India there is pressure to make "productive use of time" and maximize visits to established spots on the tourist trail. In these places all the Indians had behaved toward gaining my favor and tourist dollars on a full time basis. There had been very little honest interaction or exchanges of any real substance, even among fellow tourists. It's very had to explain but if one takes the leap and the journey, one will know what I am talking about.And, going out and seeing the work and meeting some different people is often better than staying around your home-base.

Well, relatively quickly I was done with Udaipur. I decided that Jaipur was close enough and would round out my mini-visit of Rajasthan. From there I could take a quick jaunt and get the Taj Mahal off my list. Enough people had asked me through the years that I told myself that on this trip I had to see it. And then, I could justify getting off the tourist trail again if I still had it in me.

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