Ruminations upon Wednesday February 12, 2025 to Thursday February 13, 2025 moving from Udaipur, India to Kochi, India
Udaipur is known as “the Venice of the East” because of its many interconnected lakes that many believe create a romantic atmosphere.
Our second day in Udaipur we decided to switch our schedule around so that we could do some schoolwork before exploring the area. I was still feeling dehydrated and was doing my best to drink as much water as possible.
We met our tour guide at 1:00PM at our hotel and then walked to the City Palace. Our tour guide was a lovely man who was passionate about his Hindu beliefs and the medicinal benefits of so many plants naturally growing in India. He taught us that there is a god for Chicken Pox and anything else we could think of. In fact, he told us there are over 300 million gods and goddesses. (I was curious about this number and turned to Google to verify. The internet seems to think it is 33 million. Still, that is a lot of gods and goddesses to be able to call upon.)
Our tour guide helped us buy tickets for a boat ride to the Lake Palace, the king’s summer home that is often used for important or wealthy weddings and events. The boat leaves just a few minutes’ walk from the City Palace. Our tour guide did not come with us, leaving us to determine how long we wanted to stay and to what extent we wanted to explore. This was the “kid friendly” activity our tour company had suggested. Although we wondered if we really needed a guide in Udaipur, we appreciated his guidance for purchasing the ticket and getting to the correct location for departure.
In India, every passenger must wear a lifejacket when using a boat. No exceptions. The approach is lovely in theory, but the lifejackets are so large we doubted their efficacy in saving our boys had we ended up in the water. As our boat drove around the lake to get to the Lake Palace, Amichai kept saying, “It’s just like Venice.” Personally, I disagreed, but I understood the sentiment. The lake looks beautiful, surrounded by mountains and beautiful palaces and hotels built up inside the lush forests.
The Lake Palace was not what I expected because so much of it is closed to the public. Instead, it is lined with a few restaurants, two small ice cream vendors, and a small museum space detailing the history of the Lake Palace and its architecture over time. I could imagine how lovely it would be all decked out for a formal affair. We opted for ice cream to cool us off during a blistering hot day and then took a boat ride back to where our tour guide was waiting for us.
From the dock we walked back to the City Palace where our tour guide was excited to share his city’s history with us. Unfortunately, the boys were D.O.N.E. They had absolutely no interest in learning about yet another palace. To be honest, the City Palace felt a little like a Disney location with shops, photo ops, fake elephants fighting a tiger in a cage. We could have paid more to see the Old Town Palace and museum, but that was asking too much of our children. Instead, we returned home to our hotel and took a much-needed break. I was still not feeling well and was guzzling water as fast as possible to no avail. The day ended with an early dinner to avoid HANGER gremlins from emerging, which only sort of worked. By the time bedtime rolled around, Shai and Matanel were hungry again. We let them go to town on a bunch of crackers just so they’d go to bed.
Our time in Udaipur marked the end of two weeks of running around the Indian state of Rajasthan. Although we saw many impressive and beautiful sites, we were ready for a much slower pace. Supposedly, southern India would be different.
We woke up early the next morning to drive to the airport where we would catch a flight to Kochi, through Bengaluru. We said goodbye to Ajay who was returning to his family and young son after two weeks of driving us around. At the airport we had to pass through an outdoor security check where they verify boarding passes before allowing anyone into the building. We weren’t sure how that worked for someone who had to buy a ticket on site, but I’m sure there is a workaround. It also was a problem for us because we couldn’t print our boarding passes until we entered the airport. Therefore, I had to enter alone, download and print our passes, return outside, and then show them to the guard to allow the rest of our family though. Given how many people were crowded outside, it was more of a hassle than anything else.
Eventually, we settled into a waiting area near our gate. As it turned out, we almost missed our flight because we didn’t know that our gate was changed and had been sitting at the wrong gate for over an hour. Thankfully, a gate agent came looking for us and escorted us to our plane via a personal bus ride. How embarrassing! When we landed, we realized why we had been at the wrong gate back in Udaipur. Our original flight was supposed to fly through Bengaluru. Instead, we found ourselves in Hyderabad. Again, no one told us that our flights had been changed, and the boarding passes indicated nothing of the sort either. In many ways, we were literally flying blind.
When we finally landed in Kochi, the correct final destination, we met our new driver, Sunil. He shared that he is Christian and proudly told us that 16% of the state of Kerala is Christian and the state has 100% literacy rate with its people being the best educated in all of India. As we drove through Cochin to our hotel the boys thought the area looked and felt like Tanzania, Zanzibar, and Europe. To Chaim and me, it looked and felt like a much more modern city – a bit of a cross between Tel Aviv, Bangkok, and Miami. A laidback beach vibe meets big city with a wall of humidity to round it out. Unlike in the north, the poverty level in this area is very low.
At the hotel we headed straight to the dining room because the boys were starving. They must have been feeling ravenous because everyone tried something new, including Kingfish and a Kerala dish called Suviyani. Everything was delicious. The boys loved their shakes the most because they came decorated with hearts and “I U.” Those little notes made them feel very special.
