Udaipur is referred to as 'the most romantic city in India,' and it was featured in the James Bond film 'Octopussy.' On our first night in town, we ate at one of the many restaurants that shows the film while you dine. It was fun to watch and see some of the Indian experiences we had had, even if they had a little Hollywood polish for the film.
Later that night, I woke up with my first solid case of 'Delhi Belly.' I had eaten a very green spinach paneer for lunch, that was now coming out the south end, with about the same color and consistency... won't be eating that again. And, I had a Malai Kofta with a red tomato base that was coming out the north end. While sitting on the toilet I also had to combat tiny ants that had taken over our bathroom and always tried to assault my feet if I left them still for too long. At one point later in the morning, my roommate was taking a shower and my stomach decided to reject whatever was left. I had nowhere to go but the window, so I projectile vomited over some cars below onto an adjacent roof. Fortunately it was early and there were limited people on the street and none of them noticed the show/shower above. My roommate came out of the bathroom as I was mid-heave and kindly offered the toilet to me again.
Having it all out of my system, I got dressed and went down stairs to meet the group and found that three other people had been taken out by similar illness and wouldn't be joining the tour. I stuck it out for the orientation walk around town, but decided it would be better to lay low for the day, rather than pass out in a palace somewhere due to dehydration or exhaustion. I slept the day away, spent a little time on the Internet and then joined the group in the evening to visit the Monsoon Palace for sunset.
To get to the palace we took a jeep taxi and initially only six were going, but when we departed we had ten people to pack into the taxi, which made for a cozy trip up the mountain. The palace is perched on top of a peak overlooking the town and was featured in the Bond film along with the lake palace, however we had a hard time identifying anything in the palace that looked similar to of the scenes in the movie.
As for the pictures, one is of the lake palace lit up in the evenings twilight. The sunset photo features the monsoon palace on the hill to the upper right of the photo. The picture of me was taken on one of the balconies of the Monsoon palace. And the lake side palace in the last photo is known as the city palace and is reportedly the largest palace in India... however Jodhpur also makes that claim with their Umaid Bhawan palace.
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