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Rs 250 a night for a room and everything else - Ankur Agrawal

It was the usual Thursday evening when I gave a ring to “Mohit” on a possible visit to somewhere during the weekend and as I predicted, he was all set to go. We were nearing weekend so the only undecided question was “Where to go?”. Being a “Punjabi”, he insisted on going to Mussoorie (Nandan will understand why I am saying so) but after exploring, we finally agreed upon Udaipur. The little more exploration about the transportation, city, tourist spots, staying facilities etc, put the final nail into our plans. So, there we were ready to go to Udaipur - The City of Lakes & Palaces.

Day 0 – 23 March ’07 (Friday)
As Mewar Express was over booked, we both agreed to go to Udaipur by DTC run Volvo. It started at 6:00 pm sharp from ISBT, Kashmiri Gate; the fair was Rs 700/- and after crossing Gurgaon it caught NH-8 route. The best part was that the seats that were quite easily available. I boarded Volvo from Kashmiri Gate while Mohit caught it from Gurgaon. Bus crossed Jaipur and Bhilwara. From Bhilwara, it took a left exit towards Udaipur, bypassing Chittorgarh on the way.

Day 1-24^th March (Saturday)
After reaching Udaipur at 7:30am, our search for a decent hotel started. As experienced guys, we knew that the area near bus stand will have a decent one waiting for us. Finally, we reached to Sieta Ram Lodge located in Hotel Wali Gali. Yeah, its Sieta and not Sita.

As we both liked the room so we asked for the tariff. The caretaker asked for Rs 550/- per day but being smart guys, we started bargaining at Rs 200/- . If I define the scene clearly then it was something like this… the room was on fourth floor, so while coming down from elevator he was decreasing Rs 50/- from tariff as each floor is passing, while in room the rent was Rs 550/- , on entering elevator it was Rs 500/-., on reaching 3^rd floor it was Rs 450/- and so on. Finally, we negotiated & brought him down to Rs 250/- per day thing and checked in at around 8:10 am.

After having our usual morning routine, we were back at caretaker’s desk at 9:30 am to ask him from where we should start our expedition. And there we found an auto rickshaw driver waiting for us. He asked for Rs 200/- to take us to 12 major spots in the city. As we were hungry, he took us to some famous breakfast point near JMB. Wow!! What a yummy Pyaaj ki kachori and mouth watering Dhokla we had there.

From all the places we went, Lake Pichola including Jag Mandir and Lake Palace, City Palace, Jagdish Temple, Maharana Pratap Smarak and Fateh Sagar Lake including Nehru Island were worth visiting places.
For lunch, we went to Natraj Hotel present in Bapu Market – The City’s Main Market.

As we both has a bad hand at shopping so we didn’t even try a bit of it. Heat was too much so we spent most of our afternoon - evening time on Nehru Island looking out for awesome view of Fateh Sagar Lake and Aravalis from there and remembering those golden college days. After our Udaipur city expedition, we found that touring around Udaipur will not be a worth giving thing so, we decided to go to Chittorgarh the next day.

Day2 – 25^th March ’07 (Sunday)
Wow!! What a sound sleep we had the previous night. After checking out we boarded Rajasthan Roadways busto Chittorgarh (120 km from Udaipur) at around 9:30 am.

On getting down at Chittorgarh at 11:00 am we took an auto rickshaw to reach fort. Fort covers a vast area and is walled from all sides by thick stone walls. Looking at it, anyone can imagine why it was called the strongest fort but currently it is handed over to ruining. As the auto rickshaw moved on fort’s peripheral roads, it brought me the memories of all the historical serials like Tipu Sultan etc that I had seen on Doordarshan when I was a kid.

Apart from “Vijay Stambh” and two temples (that were closed) nothing was there to watch. But as we both share some ape characteristics, we loved climbing the broad fort walls, exploring those fort ruins and doing a bit of wall climbing.

As I did my whole return journey from Rajasthan Roadways Buses, something about Rajasthan Roadways is worth mentioning over here. I can see why it is called one of the best state roadways in India.
The five category buses that it has – blue line, star line, silver line, gold line and deluxe buses- and its cooperative staff really make your unplanned trip a planned one.