Our 26th anniversary in Udaipur

March 2 -4, 2010

March 2nd: Our 26th wedding anniversary.
Still cleaning up from Holi colors – may be red and pink for another week – we are now officially a very colorful couple – not bad for 26 years together!? Slower day today to celebrate our anniversary; we just toured the Udaipur City Palace and wandered the city streets and markets. Later we found a nice place for a rooftop dinner complete with great live sitar and tabla drum playing as a background. Wednesday we took an all day drive to Kumbalgarh and Ranakpur (try saying both those with a mouthful of curry) to see one of the largest forts (a wall almost as high and wide as the Great Wall of China - just a few hundred miles shorter was the only difference. The Jain Temple at Ranakpur has to be the most ornate carved-stone temple in the world, there is stone-work filigree, pillars, statues and domes beyond my ability to count (and NO cows on the inside) – the Jains believed it a sin to harm or killing anything, Steve even had to take off his (dead) leather belt to enter (guess dropping pants was no problem just no killing). The drive through the countryside was even more interesting than temples or forts with beautiful rolling hills, small villages, simple farms and lots of local color. We were able to get a great video of an elaborate ox driven pumping system to lift water from deep wells; the old man pushing the oxen around the wheel even let Steve take a turn at it – looked sort of like an India merry-go-round ride.
Steve