16th October Kotputli, India to Udaipur, India

I set out from Kotputli early. My journey will take me from Haryana state into Rajasthan. My initial goal is Jaipur, the state capital of Rajasthan. This seems like an inconvenience, I guess that it will be time consuming and stressfull to cross the “Pink City” .... It turns out to be OK! I pick up some cash from an ATM and find myself in the heart of the city outside the Hawa Mahal, Jaipur's most famous building... “Palace of the wind” …..... Jaipur is named the pink city because of its tradition of using a dusky pink paint to decorate its building. Jaipur is not India's answer to Brighton.

Hawa Mahal

Rajasthan is geographically varied. It is easy to think of it as a desert state. In fact parts are mountainous and green. I travel along interesting mountain roads, through a landscape dotted with small lakes. Building stone is one of Rajasthan's main industries. The roads see trucks carrying huge chunks of marble and granite. The mountainsides are in places heavily scarred from the removal of this stone.

Ajmer is marble central. Hundreds of marble wholesalers line the main road. The air is full of marble dust from huge sawmills that cut chunks to slabs.

Nearing Udaipur a car hits me from behind! I am not thrown off the bike... just nudged. The driver had been tail-gating me, a metre of two behind the bike for a while as we climbed up a tightly winding road. One of the panniers took the impact and I am left a little shaken. The driver looks at me with incomprehension gesturing at me to suggest that my impoverished riding is the cause of the accident. I imagine burying my fist in his face. India's drivers have appalling road manners. I know this is a massive generalisation. I am sorry to say that a very large majority are India's drivers are aggressive, impatient, unwilling to comply with the rules of the road and generally unsafe.... My view is borne out by statistics which show fatality rates many times higher per capita than those on European roads (WHO stats..... India,134,000 road deaths 2011  v  UK, 2200 road deaths 2010. Most worryingly when you look at the stats "annual road deaths per 100,000 vehicles" the figures are astonishingly India 314 v Uk 7.......)

I arrive in Udaipur at around 5.00pm. Udaipur is famous for its lake palace. I ask for directions to the lake and am met with blank looks. I chance upon a minor palace hotel.... Rangniwas Palace. 1200 Rs is cheap for an interesting and characterfull hotel. My room is furnished with some nice colonial antiques. One of the owners has a vintage Triumph which clearly hasn't been ridden for a very long time, but adds to the ambience. Bike geeks... name that bike?

Udaipur Mileometer 24720