We bid our taxi/tour guide farewell and felt a sense of relief fall upon us. Ultimately the tour had been nice: our driver for the last six days, KP, had made us laugh; shown us a lot of sights and given us a lot of great tips, but as we walked away from his taxi for the final time, we were free to do what we wanted, when we wanted. Whether that was simply to sit with other travellers and swap stories and travel ideas or jump into a tuk-tuk to visit a park/garden which isn’t on the general tourists’ agenda.

Our final destination, as part of the tour, was Jaipur. The accommodation we had checked into had a rooftop terrace and provided the perfect place to chat with other backpackers and enjoy complimentary chai (sweet tea) in the evenings. We saw a different side of India when we were roaming the streets without a guide. We grabbed an Indian SIM card for one of our phones which allowed us to access the internet on the fly, which made traversing the city much easier (using Google Maps, Uber and Ola which is an alternative to Uber popular in India). Our next obstacle would be getting the night train from Jaipur to Udaipur (which we had already been told would likely be very delayed)!

The train was scheduled to depart Jaipur at 17:45 and arrive at Udaipur at 3:00 in the morning. The Indian Railways allows you to see how late a given service has been in the last month or two (and also live track current trains). From this, we could see the train has never been on time in the last two months, and the average we should expect is 8 hours delay. We understand that Dec/Jan are the worst times for train travel due to thick fog which descends, particularly in Northern India. Knowing this made planning a lot easier: we kept our accommodation the night we were meant to be staying on the train and tracked the trains progress throughout the day (it originated from Calcutta which is a long way from Jaipur). It was looking likely to be getting to us for around 3:00, so we had an early night at around 21:00, set our alarms for 1:50 in the morning and hoped for the best!

When we awoke, the first thing we checked was the latest train progress, and against all odds, it had made some time back and was due to arrive at Jaipur at 2:30, only forty minutes away. So a mad panic ensued of us packing, fast walking to the train station, trying to work out where we need to go, where the platforms are, which one we need to be at, etc. The electronic signs alternate between English and Hindi but were easy to follow. We arrived at our platform with a couple of minutes to spare before our train rolled up. The panic wasn’t over: the train was huge and we had no idea what our carriage, seat number, etc was as it wasn’t on our tickets. It turns out when you book in advance, you often aren’t allocated a specific seat/bed, instead, a few hours before the train sets off, they work out who is going where. You can find out your allocated bed/carriage from their website, but we didn’t know this at the time.

We hadn’t been very brave and daring and had opted for a first class ticket, meaning we would have a lockable cabin with a bed to sleep in. More than anything we were worried about our bags. It turns out the train only had one first-class section, and that section only had four rooms, three of which were occupied, so we took the remaining room. The other three rooms had four beds to each room, but we were fortunate in getting a coupé which is a room with only two beds! We had requested this, but lots of people do, and as there is only one on the entire train, you need some good fortune. Apparently, a couple travelling together is favoured for a coupé (but if seven couples all request it, only one will succeed).

Our room was cosy, with nice beds, bedsheets, covers, reading lights, power sockets and room for our bags. We were relieved when the ticket inspector came by, confirmed we were on the right train and in the right room. It meant we could turn the light off and let the gentle swaying of the train send us to sleep.

When we woke up, it was after 9, and we were not too far away from Udaipur. There is a certain romance in the adventure of going to sleep in one place and waking up somewhere else. When we looked out of the window, we saw a different landscape to that which we departed, mostly green with bursts of colour from plants and flowers. We had slept better than we had expected, leaving us feeling both satisfied and excited for what Udaipur will greet us with.

Udaipur, known as the city of lakes, a romantic city, lived up to its reputation – our favourite city so far. So many beautiful views, including those from a vantage point which can be reached by cable car.

After our taxi scam used up a lot more money than we had budgeted for, we had at least found ourselves cutting back in other areas, such as alcohol up until this point. But only part of it was budget, we actually found a lot of places simply didn’t sell alcohol (it is discouraged under Hinduism, so it isn’t so surprising). But in Udaipur we found that whilst beer and other drinks weren’t on restaurant menus, staff would often explicitly tell us, without being asked or prompted, that we can order alcoholic drinks if we pleased. So we enjoyed a couple of beers and gin an tonics whilst we enjoyed the lights reflecting in the lakes below.

We had a lovely time relaxing in Udaipur, walking around various parks, taking a boat ride around one of the lakes and seeing the City Palace, which Udaipur is most famous for.

Udaipur feels so very different to any of the previous places we have seen so far in India. We had enjoyed the adventurous night train journey and were a little bit sad to be heading to the airport to take a flight to our next stop: Mumbai. Within India, we had tried out various forms of transport, including tuk-tuk, rickshaw, train, taxi and even elephant – we wondered what an internal Indian flight would be like – surely not as delayed as the train network!

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