Day 19 – Amazon Does Another Palace and an Island Dedicated to Loose Women

It was Republic day, a national holiday. After a hearty breakfast, we motored into Udaipur to visit yet another palace, supposedly bigger and better than all we saw before. It owes its remarkable state of preservation to the lack of plundering by foreign invaders.

The palace was very ornate and beautiful and as in other places is now used as part hotel, part wedding venue, part museum and part residence for descendants of the last Maharaja. Suffice it to say that I was becoming bored by now and if it weren’t for Amazon’s lust to “see it all”, I would have been back at the hotel sipping on some our secret stash of beer. Actually, I don’t think we fooled anyone yesterday with clinking noises the bag made when we checked in.

After stopping at a local restaurant for a lunch at which I couldn’t resist to order a beer only to be told that it was a dry day (Amazon just shook her head) we headed for our afternoon boat ride to the island where the Maharaja used to house his concubines.

The island was a small man-made island which had been converted to a small motel/wedding venue in modern days. Of course, the bars were shuttered, and preparations underway to set up the island for and evening wedding celebration.

Following this we returned to our hotel to prepare for our early morning flight to Mumbai. Amazon fretted over how best to balance the weights of the bags. This was our last “in country” flight and the weight restrictions were such that the checked bags had to be no more than 33 lb. We had our fingers crossed that they wouldn’t weigh or count the carry ons.

It was an early night and Amazon left me alone to finish off the beer supply. Oh well, someone had to step up!