My Solo Budget / Backpacking trip to Rajasthan (Sep 2017): PART 12- DAY 7 (30 SEP): SIGNING OFF FROM THE SERENE CITY OF UDAIPUR

This is the final part- Part 12 of this blog series. You can find the links to the previous parts below:
Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 6   Part 7   Part 8   Part 9   Part 10   Part 11

My 7 day trip to Rajasthan was drawing to a close with my final day- 30 Sep at Udaipur. I had a flight from Ahmedabad to Chennai (home!) in the late evening and I had to take a bus from Udaipur to Ahmedabad in the afternoon. And I had to checkout of the hotel by 10 am which meant I had around 4-5 hours to explore Udaipur. I could walk to The City Palace that was a couple of kms away from my hotel, ride a ferry in Lake Pichola that was adjacent to it, and if I really wanted to, I could check out The Monsoon Palace, which was a bit far away uphill.

After 6 days in Jaipur-Jaisalmer-Jodhpur, I was getting the feeling that the returns from visits to forts and palaces were diminishing. In fact they were at an all time low- so I was not really looking forward to the palaces as much as exploring the streets of Udaipur and maybe its food. So after smoothly checking out of the hotel, I decided to walk to The City Palace, have breakfast near the place and then think about what to do next. The walk in the morning sun was quite enjoyable, on the road that wound its way slowly and in turns uphill and downhill from Patel Circle. The route got a bit interesting towards the end with hostels and cafes boasting of rooftop views of the palace and bazaars with increasing levels of buzz as I neared my destination.

I had a simple breakfast of poha and tea and some random snack before heading towards the ticket counter. As expected, the ticket counter sold tickets for entry into the palace as well as for the ferry ride, but what caught me off-guard were the prices. At Rs. 300 for just the entry into the palace complex, the prices rose upwards from there for the ferry rides and other attractions. Udaipur was the richer counterpart to Jaipur, Jaisalmer and Jodhpur I thought to myself. Did it have anything to do with the proximity to Gujarat, famous for its flourishing business (acu)men, I wondered. To make things worse, it was a Saturday and the crowds were beginning to swell already. I bought myself the basic ticket that offered me an entry into the palace complex, deciding that a ferry ride was not worth as much as the ticket price.

If Jaipur was the Pink City and Jaisalmer was the Sandstone City, Udaipur was the White City. The City Palace was a pristine looking building decked in whitish shades, lined with fountains and well-maintained lawns.

I roamed the grounds of the complex exploring its nooks and corners for anything of interest, hoping to avoid the crowds before heading indoors for the familiar sights of decorated hallways, pillars, ornate mirrored rooms and ceilings and roof-top views. I wouldn’t say I had much luck, but the architecture and paintings, especially in the courtyards, indeed gave off a different vibe from what I was used to for the past 6 days.

I was done with the indoors in about 1.5 hours and that meant I had around 3 hours to kill before my bus to Ahmedabad, that would start from a place that was a little over a kilometre away from my current spot. I could take maybe an hour for lunch near my boarding point I figured. Travelling back and forth for another 16 or so kms to The Monsoon Palace on the other side of the city, within the next 2 hours seemed pointless. So, I resorted to my favourite lazy past-time- people watching. I sat myself on a stone bench under a tree and watched the crowds make beelines in and out of the palace complex. I did this for almost an hour before deciding to step out and stroll to my bus boarding point.

The walk was a bit complicated as it took me through narrow bylanes and dead-ends that were crisscrossing each other and were too easy to miss. After a couple of wrong turns, I managed to reach the small office that the travels had and confirmed that my bus would be starting on time. I walked around some more looking for lunch options when I found a Natraj restuarant nearby. A trip to Rajasthan was incomplete without a meal of Rajasthani thali I realised. I went up to the buzzing dining hall and had one of the most satisfying traditional meals an Indian could ever have on a hot pre-summer afternoon- I love this model of thali that most Indian restaurants offer- you are initially served a standard quantity of everything- and later on you can have any quantity of all the items (except desserts mostly) you want, all for a fixed price- commonly referred to as an unlimited thali.

A typical Rajasthani thali, Courtesy: rajgovt.org

I came back to the travels office and waited for my bus to start. As it turned out, the ‘bus’ was more of a van, that had 12-15 seats. Udaipur to Ahmedabad was a 5 hour journey by road and it seemed to be a popular route among locals- they seemed to be travelling between these two cities quite often for business, the fact that an air-conditioned van carrying 12-15 passengers for a slightly premium price ran every afternoon, with a stoppage at the Ahmedabad airport seemed to support.

I boarded the van and took my seat, laying back comfortably. The journey to Ahmedabad was uneventful- the van stopping only for a snack break after a couple of hours. Ahmedabad was a city that I had hoped to touch when I had a larger Rajasthan cum Gujarat trip in mind (mainly for covering Lothal and The Rann of Kutch in Gujarat) and I was glad to be able to check off one more state from my been-there list, if only for a connecting flight home. As dusk fell, I got down at the entry to the Airport Road and took a 15-20 minute walk to reach the Ahmedabad airport terminal. I had more than an hour to kill and I had a light snack / dinner in a cafe outside the airport departure gate before stepping through the gates- it was finally time to signoff from the trip of my dreams, one with experiences and memories that would be cherished for a lifetime.

Postscript:

Writing about this trip would be incomplete without tipping my hat to these two guys who were my unfailing companions, both of whom held themselves together admirably throughout the trip.

I. My Targus backpack- being a religious advocate of packing minimally, I carried only this guy (a little shy of 6 kgs) on my back throughout my almost 10 day trip (including Udaipur-Chennai-Kolkata)- I expected it to show wear and tear within a few days, especially around the flimsy area on top between the handle and the zip, but it stood the test admirably- this was its second tough test after the Delhi-Uttarakhand-Agra trip in Oct 2016 and it sailed through quite comfortably.

II. My Skechers shoes- I wore them for almost 12-16 hours everyday during this trip. I had already lost almost 90% of their sole grips, having used them on multiple treks during my stay in Shillong and during the Oct 2016 Delhi-Uttarakhand-Agra trip that involved a lot of long walks (being the punishing walker I am). Prior to the trip, I was not sure if I had to invest in another pair since these guys were still in good shape except for the sole grips. I just tried them on for a short walk a few days before the trip and I knew I could trust these guys and they came through without a squeak. They even look like they might pack a couple more trips in them 🙂

Trip Expenses (Day 7, 30 Sep)

1. Breakfast near City Palace: Rs. 80
2. Entry ticket to City Palace: Rs. 300
3. Water bottle and refreshments: Rs. 40
4. Lunch- Rajasthani thali: Rs. 220
5. Snack / dinner at Ahmedabad airport: Rs. 70

Coming up next:
A blast from the past (2016 or something else altogether) or is there something around the corner?
Signing off until next time,saying,

Courtesy: deviantart.com

My Solo Budget / Backpacking trip to Rajasthan (Sep 2017): PART 5- THE ADVENTURE BEGINS (THOUGH NOT REALLY THE WAY I WANTED IT TO!) a.k.a. DAY 0 (23 SEP): KOLKATA-JAIPUR

This is Part 5 of this blog series. You can find the links to the previous parts below:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Note-1: Sorry this part took a long time coming. But good news is, this part marks the actual beginning of my trip as I leave Kolkata and land in Jaipur on my week long journey. So buckle up!

Note-2: Since one of the most important things people look out for in a trip like this is the expenses, I thought I would write them down at the end of every post hereafter, summarising how much I spent during the day, on what (since I am thinking of writing 1 post for each day of the trip, this might work out neatly, I guess?). I would be adding only the expenses I incurred on the road, since I have already added the tickets and stay costs in Part 4.

During my college days I used to pack my stuff 2-3 days before a trip. But over a period of time, as I started travelling often (for work, more often than not) I stopped caring that much and used to pack on the day of the trip or just the night before. Over a period of time, I have managed to create a personal google doc for travel items, that I use as a checklist before packing for any trip. This is greatly useful because you can use it from your mobile on the go and you can also use it as a list of things to remember packing on your way back (though I have never used it for this purpose 😛Repacking is just putting back everything in sight!). Even for a critical trip such as this, I guess I only cursorily went through the list 1-2 days before the trip to make sure I do not have to plan well ahead for any item to be packed. Whatever floats your boat!

So on 22 Sep (Friday), the night before the trip I was debating to myself on whether I would pack my bag and take it to office and then leave from there (there was a bus from my workplace that took me right till the gates of the airport) or come back from work early and leave from home (the bus from my home to the airport would leave me with a 10-15 minute walk to the airport gates). Doing the former would mean I would be formally dressed and would have to pack those formal clothes which I do not need for the trip along with formal shoes, separately. For someone planning on carrying as minimum luggage as possible, this was not a good option. But coming back home and leaving would mean precious time lost (I would have to pass through my workplace to the airport, and taking the workplace-home-pack and leave-workplace route for the airport would mean almost an hour extra). I could not leave my workplace before 5 pm if I wanted to get a full day’s pay! My flight was scheduled a little before 9 pm and puja holidays meant the roads will be choked with traffic, not to mention the long queues at the airport entry.

I was not planning to carry a check-in bag (Hell, no!, I hated the waiting times and the trouble that carrying 2 bags as a solo traveller entails- my ideal situation is one where I can carry all my luggage on my backpack and roam around, without struggling. Carrying 2 bags would mean I would have to leave one bag at wherever I stayed and come back and then leave, all of which were added constraints for someone focused on travelling minimally) but still I would need to reach the airport before 8 pm, and considering the traffic, if I was catching a bus, I would need to catch one by 6 pm from my place. Weighing the pros and cons, I decided I would go with the 2nd option- leave office by 5 pm, come home, pack, leave home to catch a bus hopefully by 6pm, so that I could reach the airport stop by 7:45 pm (in the worst case) and walk to the airport gates by 8pm. All I did for packing on the 22nd Sep was that I bunched up all the clothes and sundry stuff that I wanted to pack and left it on the bed and went to sleep.

23 Sep dawned and it was a usual day at office. This meant I needed to work extra hard to wrap things up before 5 pm. No responses for my Couchsurfing requests meant that I had to go to my pre-booked hostel. I called them in the afternoon to let them know that I would be landing at midnight and the guy was pretty cool with that and assured me courteously that it won’t be a problem. Apart from that, I withdrew around Rs. 7500 in cash from an ATM. I have always felt it is a good idea to carry enough cash when you are on the road and you don’t know what lies ahead.

At work, I was glancing at my watch every now and then and kept reminding my boss that I needed to leave early. But true to Murphy’s law, all hell broke loose and I had to cut it very close and leave office around 5 pm leaving some urgent stuff hanging- but the understanding was that our team would be able to handle it without me (Spoiler alert: Nope, they couldn’t!). So even before I was halfway home, the calls started coming in from office, asking for help. I need to mention here that my mobile was beginning to create problems with charging all of a sudden before the trip and for someone who is heavily dependent on google maps for his travels, I needed to conserve charge badly. I do not own a power bank (power banks are banned on carry-on baggage and owning one would mean I need to carry it in a check-in bag, which I did not want to do!- besides, getting paranoid about charging two devices instead of one didn’t make much sense to me). In some ways using my mobile battery conservatively tested me a lot and also helped me during the trip (more on that later!)

So I needed to conserve my mobile’s battery till I reached and settled at my hostel in Jaipur, late in the night- and these calls from my workplace weren’t helping! I reached home after buying a couple of last minute things (a small tube of toothpaste- one I was sure would sail through the security check of my carry-on bag, and not raise any alarms, since it would be well under the 100 ml of liquid allowed on-board) and got my packing done first while continuing to charge my mobile. But the endless barrage of calls that I had to attend meant that I could leave home only after 6pm and my mobile was not charged as much as I wanted to. Looking back, it feels easy to say that I could have done some things better- probably packed quicker or something, but I did what best I could at that moment. And as they say, with any disaster, it is not a single isolated mistake that leads to the disaster, it is a series of small ones- so probably that!

So armed with my backpack and water bottle, and a heart that was equally excited and anxious, I reached the bus stop, a little around 6:15pm. However things weren’t going to go my way. I would have liked to catch a bus at 6pm but it was getting close to 6:30pm and my bus was not in sight. I fancied missing my flight was not a great way to start my trip- if I was going to catch that flight, I needed to take desparate measures. I decided to book a cab with Uber / Ola. The app showed me I had to pay almost Rs. 500 for the trip- great start to a ‘budget’ trip, I remember thinking! I took it and the cab wound its way through the pre-puja Kolkata traffic. I need to mention here that I took a bus to the airport from my workplace before the 2015 puja and contrary to the warnings of my colleagues, I reached the airport well ahead of time, without any traffic blockades, in spite of going through a route that my colleagues warned me not to take. So now in 2017, in spite of the delays so far, I felt things wouldn’t be much different and that all was under control. The only measure I needed to take was to request the cab driver to let me charge my mobile on the car and he agreed. I finished off one last call with my boss and had to put my phone on flight mode to let it charge fast.

But some 60% into the trip, around 9-10 kms before the airport, we hit a roadblock (figuratively). We were racing against time but the traffic was not moving an inch for almost 20 minutes and Google maps seemed to suggest that it was not going to relent. The driver gave me an ultimatum- let me turn around and take you through a roundabout route but pay me 100 bucks extra. What option did I have? I agreed. To cut a long story short, full credits to the driver, he dropped me at the airport at 8:35 pm. I had probably 20 minutes from the airport gate to boarding the aircraft. I was still not sure I would be able to make it. I thanked my stars because I had at least printed out my boarding pass through the online facility and since the entry was not as crowded as I expected, I could rush straight to the security check.

Random pro-tip: One very useful thing I did before the trip was printing out all my tickets (flight, train, bus) and the stay bookings (hotels, hostels), arranged them in chronological order and numbered them on the outside and stored them in the front pouch of my backpack, so that I could access them any moment.

So back at the airport, I hazily remember passing through the security check and rushing to the gate. I guess they were giving a last call out for me and when I gave the boarding pass to the staff and they cleared it, my breath came back. I am sure I was the last one to enter the bus that took the passengers to the boarding point. Things went without incident after that- my only grouse was that the mobile was still not properly charged- I could probably just squeeze in another cab booking in Jaipur if I wanted.

Finally I landed in Jaipur airport around midnight. Having had enough hassles for the day, I hailed a cab with Uber / Ola once again. I am not really sure if I entered the location right (I knew pretty well that there were 2 Backpackers Panda hostels, with 2-3 streets between themselves) but I landed at the wrong one! My place was called Backpackers Panda Stephels and the really helpful cab driver let me use his mobile to search for the right place and dropped me there- the trip from the airport costed Rs. 180, not bad for a distance of almost 12 kms. The pleasant guy at the reception let me check-in comfortably and gave me a leaflet with the free wifi password (Yay!). When I told him I was coming from Kolkata, he spoke Bengali and told me he is from that part of the country. But with my sketchy knowledge of the region and the language, I couldn’t make out where he was from 😔 I guess I told him that I was from South India, only working in Kolkata 😃

I had booked a private Non-AC room with a bath and I got a room on the ground floor. For a little under Rs. 1000 for 2 nights, the place was quite good. I didn’t take photos of the place and the room but attaching some photos I found online for the place.
Thanks to Google maps and travellers photos on redbus.in

I stayed in a room not very different from this one- this may be the same room for all I know! If you are wondering how much more space is left apart from what is visible in the photos, you may assume as little space as required, that lets you to take a photo like this 😛

It was a typical backpackers place. That means, you obviously don’t get room service or a great view or great ventilation within your room….

But the place would be somewhat clean (meaning not really clean) and you would have stuff that backpackers value- like free wifi and shared social spaces like these that lets you hang out with other travellers and learn and share through your stories. The place even had a kitchen where you could cook by yourself.

So anyway, it was past midnight and I had a whole week of travelling Rajasthan ahead of me. At that moment, even though I was all excited (cue Morgan Freeman on the bus to Fort Hancock, Texas, in Shawshank Redemption), I couldn’t find any travellers to share stories with and my stomach was growling with hunger. I asked the guy at the reception to tell me where I could find some dinner (meaning, street food, since that’s all one would probably find with luck at that time of the night- and I was all eager to dig into some authentic Jaipur street food) and he happily obliged. He told me I needed to walk out of the hostel and to the left. I don’t remember exactly but Google maps tells me it was probably Jalupura Main Road.

So I locked my room and walked out. Walking for less than 5 minutes in the direction he pointed in, took me to a street that was buzzing with activity even at that time of the night. I explored the stretch for a few minutes but quickly decided to walk into a place because it was serving dinner and looked like it was going to shut down for the day. I had a wholesome meal of a couple of tandoori rotis and piping hot Channa Masala that I almost burnt my mouth with. They charged me Rs. 66 for the meal and I walked back contented. I settled on my cozy bed and started charging my mobile (Uff!) and used the free wifi to plan for the next day! It was going to be a new day tomorrow!

Trip Expenses, Day 0 (23 Sep)

1. Cab from Kolkata home to Kolkata airport: Rs. 600 (21+ kms with pre-puja traffic adding to the woes)
2. Cab from Jaipur airport to Backpackers Panda Stephels Hostel: Rs. 180 (~12 kms)
3. Dinner at Jalupura Main Road: Rs. 66 (2 or 3 Tandoori rotis and Channa Masala / curry)

Coming up next:
Day 1 (24 Sep): Abhaneri and Jaipur…