Dos Gardenias Para Ti

On Tuesday we took the overnight Mewar Express from Bharatpur to Udaipur. It was our first sleeper train and it was awesome. All old trainy and full of little latches. Since we had a first class cabin, there were also bed linens and a hand towel. The bench seats fold down for nighttime and the whole train was already in this configuration when we climbed on. I think we slept better on this train than we had the previous several nights.
Udaipur has turned out to be the cold glass of water we'd been hoping for. After Agra and Bharatpur, this is a much more pleasant place to spend time. Indians think so too. Apparently, this is THE place for vacationing families and honeymooning couples from all over the area. Its easy to see why. Its a really old town filled with really old white and yellow houses situated around two lakes and in the shadow of mountains. The people are way friendlier and there's much less harassment on the street level. To me, Salzburg, Austria is the classic old Europe visitors come searching for. Similarly, Udaipur is the classic old India. They both have the old architecture as well as the tourist infrastructure. We are staying at Kankarwa Haveli (A+, clean, classy, cheap, a gem).
The 13th James Bond, Octopussy, was filmed here and every backpacker cafe advertises nightly showings at 7pm. We joined in and caught one of the showings at a rooftop cafe overlooking the city while sharing chinese and tea. Very romantic. The next few days we visited the spots highlighted in the movie and many others not picturesque enough to make it. We saw the ridiculously large city palace where the local royalty still lives, we passed macaques on the way up to the monsoon palace, we visited a hindu temple that was all abuzz, we strolled through the island Nehru park, and we shopped our way through the town itself. Kiima bought three shirts here.