Part 16 – February 22, 2015.   Cliff Notes: Another train station, same old challenges and we never quite get them all right.

Our final train ride – the Sunday overnight train from Udaipur to Delhi, 12 hours, 6:15 PM departure.  Udaipur station is calm and relaxed.  Again we need to find platform, train, car, and cabin.  Sign at station entrance says train is on platform 1.  Find bench and wait there for train to arrive.  Train arrives on schedule and we hike to front of it to look for our car – wrong way, it’s at the rear.  Now what cabin?  No passenger list is on car so we sit in cabin A (the one we had last time) and are joined by a Korean woman and her Indian husband who teaches Korean history in Korea.  Oops, wrong cabin.  Move to cabin B.  We team up with Benji, an American whose “home“ is in London but who spends almost all of his time riding Mewar horses in Rajasthan (that’s where we are).  Mewar horses are what the Mewar Maharanas of Rajasthan and their warriors rode into battle.  We check the list that is now posted on the outside of the car and find that we are now in the right cabin.  Benji got to the cabin first and staked his claim for one to the two large lower berths – he’s 77.  Sandy has the other large lower berth and I have a tiny upper berth – it’s not fair, but I guess that with age comes privilege.  Our fourth cabin mate is scheduled to join us in 6 hours.  He gets the other upper.

Sandy making the bed in her comfy, large lower berth

Last night, Saturday,  we spent some leisure time on our roof terrace where Sandy sketched and I watched kites being flown from the rooftops.

Today, Sunday, it was HOT in Udaipur – 95 degrees.  We spent the day staying cool in anticipation of our train ride to Delhi at night.  In the morning we had a leisurely breakfast with our host, Akshay, and his sister, Tina, saw an art exhibition, walked the market streets of the city in the shade, and visited a beautiful small Hindu temple not in the guide books.  There were so many small mirrored surfaces that the autofocus on the camera worked only 1/3 of the time.

At one o’clock we called it a day, fetched our bags from the homestay, and set up camp at our favorite little restaurant, The Whistling Teal, down the street.  

We had lunch, did some reading, and had tandoori chicken prepared to take away for our dinner later on the train.

We are now back in Delhi on Monday and ready to do a last day of sight seeing.

Terry and Sandy