Just a Touch Touristy

So let me run by you some of the more touristy stuff the stuff we’ve been up to outside of the centre. But please don’t stress at me for not having photos yet – I’m trying my best! They’re just refusing to load, but I’ll have a quiet word with them on the side and see if they’ll think about their behaviour.

We’ve had a good dose of temples, starting with Eklingji and Nagda. Eklingji is still very much a working temple, complete with people making and selling garlands of flowers as offerings. Because it is still an immensely popular place of worship, we got shunted around a bit by the people who (perfectly reasonably) just wanted to get on with their prayers rather than inspect the architecture and countless statues and pictures of deities and demi-gods. But then again, I would always rather see a building full of life and being used for its original purpose rather than as an empty monument. Jagadish temple, right in the centre of Udaipur, was similar, although not as intricate. We got a guided tour from one of the students from the traditional art school, who pointed out the various features of the temple. One major tip – take socks with you for temple visits, the marble gets bloody hot under bare feet, even if it is white.

Nagda temple, on the other hand, is no longer used as a place of worship. According to the guy who took us on a very in-depth tour, it was destroyed by the Mughal invasion (but between you and me, and without getting too deep into the particulars of Mughal history, I’d take this with a pinch of salt). To start with, it didn’t look particularly destroyed to me – the carvings, despite dating from the eighth century, were remarkably clear. Anyone who’s anyone is carved on the building somewhere – Shiva, Krishna, Lakshmi, Radha, Ganesha, everybody involved in the Karma Sutra, the guy getting intimate with a donkey...

We’ve also just got back from the City Palace, a beautiful building which houses various museum-lets about the history of Udaipur. The photography archive is particularly fascinating, charting the history of Udaipur since the advent of the camera. We’ve had a couple of attempts to see the sunset from various buildings on high ground, though a couple of technical faults have meant that we haven’t made it yet.