A slow morning getting up and working out if Jayne was feeling any better this morning. I hadn’t slept very well (I was half keeping an ear out to make sure she was okay) and have got far too into the crappy book series I downloaded from the iTunes Store to rush Jayne out the door… Left the hotel around midday and headed out to get some breakfast/lunch. Went to a new cafe around the corner which has a Simonelli coffee machine on their counter top (one of the reasons Jayne wanted to try it – think she is reminiscing about her H&H days!). They had puzzles on each of the tables and, since there were no other customers, we collected them all and got to work on solving them. Managed the 2 maze ones but failed miserably at the rest. Jayne equally didn’t solve them and the effort did odd things to her hair!! 
As we were both feeling better, and had a slight case of cabin fever, we decided to start walking in the direction of the park for as long as we felt we could. Wandered into a Tibetan market randomly at the entrance of the park. It was almost like a car boot sale… All the stalls were tightly packed together and stuffed full of stuff that we didn’t want to buy! There were lots of Indians buying fleece lined coats and scarf/hat combos (whilst we are still hot in our t-shirts!!). Headed into the park and just walked around, avoiding families asking for photos of us. Found a path full of monkeys (the first time we’ve seen them in Udaipur) and a baby monkey seemed particularly keen to come close to me – the mum wasn’t so keen!! Walked past the ‘famous’ rose garden (with no roses) and ended up at the Gandhi statue. Deciding it was too hot to sit in the sun, we tried to find somewhere shady and fell upon the entrance to the city zoo. Debated whether to go in or not but, as it looked blissfully empty and incredibly shady, we decided to go in. There wasn’t really much to see in the zoo – 1 leopard, 2 warthogs, some monkeys, deer and lots of birds. The enclosures themselves were more fascinating than the animals inside them – some of them were clearly Victorian and were really ornate, having just been patched up in places rather than bring replaced. Sat for a long time on the swings in the children’s park that faced the deer enclosure, discussing the animals we would want if we bought a zoo ourselves.
Left the zoo and continued walking through the park to the lake and the viewpoint. Decided that the cable car looked too dodgy to use it and neither of us had the energy to walk up the hill to see the viewpoint. Tried to go via the city palace back to the hotel but the security guard wanted us to have museum tickets just to walk through the grounds! So we headed back the way we came, looking in the lake and both were surprised at how clean and transparent the water was despite the amount of rubbish floating in it.
Rested back at the hotel for a few hours, catching up with Mags on Skype before heading out to dinner. Decided to go back to the same cafe as this morning. Gathered up all the puzzles again and, thankfully, we finished every single one with comparative ease! Jayne spoke to the owners about how many coffees they made (about the same in a month that she used to make in an hour at H&H) whilst I read a journal article about the benefits of keeping a diary from a literature & writers point of view. Headed back to the hotel when we saw the fattest rat run up the open sewers along side the houses – even the locals seemed taken aback by his size. He was lovingly described by Jayne as ‘fatty ratty wanna chapatti’ which made us both giggle all the way to our room.
Trans Travels 