Diwali in Udaipur

After finally saying goodbye to Calcutta (for real this time), we hopped on a plane to Jaipur, then pretty much immediately got on a train for Udaipur. It's a smallish city in the middle of Rajasthan, famous for having several giant palaces, a lake, a palace on the lake, rolling hills and, perhaps most impressively, for being the site of half of the 1983 James Bond classic "Octopussy". It's hard to forget any of these things while you're here, since there's almost always a fort or temple or lake within sight, and since every single restaurant in the city shows Octopussy at least once per day.


We got here one day before October 28th, which happens to be Diwali (one of the biggest Hindu festivals of the year). It's called the "festival of lights" (not to be confused with the OTHER festival of lights, Hannukah, which falls on a different day and is also Jewish), and thousands of small oil lamps and Christmas lights (or rather, Diwali lights) are traditionally lit in celebration.



Modern pyrotechnic merchandise has made things a little more exciting, and from sundown until 3:00 in the morning the whole city was in a constant state of explosion. It was really neat to see a city-wide, hours-long fireworks display, though after seeing some questionable lighting techniques and a few flaming projectiles landing in restaurants, I cringe to think of the Udaipur emergency room situation on October 29th.

There's a big family component to Diwali, and most people gather with their extended families to eat colossal quantities of sweets (and set off fireworks). Everyone seems to warm up, and the constant low-level tourist hassle (which has sort of blended into the background of India for us by now) turned into genuine friendliness for the whole night. The family who lives beside our hotel even invited us in to share in their celebrations (and, more importantly, their epic dessert mountain), so we joined them in their living room for conversation (and macaroons). Mallory thought to get a picture of me and some of the family members, but forgot to get in one herself, possibly because our brains were coated with a thick layer of fudge by that point. Seriously, so much food.


On Monday, we've got bus tickets to Jodhpur for 6 days. Once we're there and settled, we'll post about our recent souvenier-buying binge; I apparently have no innate ability to resist buying musical instruments, and Mal reverts to kid-in-a-candy-store mode when she's sat down in front of a big box of gems and minerals.