Ranakpur - Udaipur

Bec has fallen asleep already so ill write a quick summary of today. Had a great nights sleep and ended up being warm after all! We got up at about 730 as the night before we were offered a village trek for 150 rupees each and we thought why not. So we headed off at 8 with our guide and my 2 new friends (the hotel dogs) straight up a big mountain and soon after headed into a small village where we were shown how the locals make flour, we both gave the grinding wheel a spin and had a quick look around, we had to leave the village rather quickly as the village dog didn’t approve of the hotel dogs wondering around on his turf! So our guide suggested we leave to avoid a dog fight. Next we headed onto the village well, where our guide showed us how the locals get their water, I headed down the well to where the water was and there were quite a few fish living in nice clean water - which was also quite warm considering how cold it was. We headed back the way we had come past the angry dog and then headed back to the hotel via another path. Back at the hotel we had a huge breakfast with tiger (the Great Dane) using my foot as his pillow. After eating we explored the area around the hotel and took some photos of the spectacular scenery, this took us up to around noon when Sud came to pick us up. He asked if we would like to stop off at a fort which would only be about a 45 minute detour but well worth it, we agreed and upon arriving were not sorry! The place was massive, it is called Kumbhalgarh Fort but is also known as cloud palace, this is because in June/July the top of the fort cannot be seen as it is amongst the clouds. We ended up paying for a guide who took us through the many gates, all the way to the top (it was quite the walk). The highest point is on top of the Maharana’s quarters and the view is simply stunning, we took a lot of photos up here so you will see what I mean! We headed back down to the car and then had roughly another hour and a half to two hour drive to Udaipur, most of this drive too was actually really beautiful amongst the huge mountains and tiny villages growing sugar cane/rice/mustard seeds - so green, a big change for us after the desert for almost 2 weeks. Once we arrived in Udaipur we headed to our hotel to check in and dump our bags, Sud stopped along the way for us to buy some drinks at a bottle shop as the night before we had a couple of mixed drinks which were expensive (well cheap for Aus but expensive for here) so we decided to buy a couple of bottles and mix our own to save money. After we checked in at our hotel we headed back to the lake palace to watch the sunset which was beautiful. Next we quickly headed off to get a copy of my passport so we could get an Indian sim card as we had overheard another tourist saying she had gotten one and it was so much cheaper then using your own, Sud enlisted the help of his local friend as we had to use his friends address to buy the card. After this we headed back to our hotel for some dinner and were treated to lovely food and our own little fire to warm us up on a very cold night. Tomorrow we explore Udaipur so I’m off to bed.