We started our 3 day Rajasthan journey from delhi on high note with some very enthusiastic co-passengers. We
expected us to reach Jodhpur by 7:30 in morning. Our plan was like:
Delhi >> Jodhpur >> Mount Abu >> Udaipur >> Delhi
Name of our train was Mandore Express. According to an old
tale, here in Jodhpur, there is a place called Mandore, which is hometown of
Raavan's wife Mandodri.
We reached Jodhpur
at around 8 AM, took an auto and booked two rooms in a hotel nearby railway station.
This was an awesome
first day. Absolutely Fantabulous! We started with marvellous Ummed Bhavan
palace, then went to Mehran Garh fort followed by Jaswant Theda, Madodri Fort
and concluded at Massuria Hill.
Ummed Bhavan Palace
Ummed Bhaavan is a
real beauty. Although not much to roam here as most part of it is now
converted into hotel. For general public a museum is open with entry fee of
Rs.20. It hosts artifacts belonging to royal family.
Mehran Garh Fort
This is situated on
a hillock giving a spectacular view of The blue city, Jodhpur. It hosts a nice
museum, several temples and the best of them all, The Mighty Cannons at top of the fort.
Jaswant Theda
This is a nice
temple with a fine pond, great view and lots of peace. We got quite a few great photographs here and saw some nice n cute aliens as well ;)
Mandodri Garden and Fort
Mandodri fort is a
quite cool place but its not well maintained. Thus is pretty dirty when compared
to rest of Jodhpur. Here we saw two ancient temples and some nice view of city. A few of us saw goddess beauty materialized ;)
Massuria Hill
This was last spot
in Jodhpur that we visited. It's a garden situated at top of hillock, giving
great view of city, we missed
sunset here just by few minutes :(, but still we enjoyed a lot.
Ajay finally
managed to hold a tall structure this time, it happened when he almost rooted
out a TV tower :D
Day 2 - 19 Feb, 2012
We left our hotel at
4:15 AM for Mount Abu.
Today we visited 5
major points namely Nakki Lake, Guru Shikhar, Brahma Kumari Peace Park, Dilwara
Temple and Sunset Point.
Nakki Lake
According to an idiom, this lake is made by angels using their own nails. There were boats and balloons to enjoy lake. Around lake their were some other attractions like horse ride,Rajasthani Folk dresses, Bharat Mata Mandir and several food joints.
Guru Shikhar
Situated on top of a
hill, it was at about 1 hr ride from Mount Abu. Drive to this was fun
filled one, turning at sharp turns and stopping in between to get snaps.
Here
there were two temples one dedicated to Bhagwan Dattatreya and other was of
DeviJi.
Nearby was a physics observatory, which seemed to be a prohibited place for general public.
Brahma Kumari Peace Park
This was some sort of meditation center I felt. Here we got an information byte, that Shiv and Shankar are not same. Shankar is god whom we all do
worship, while Shiv is the divine flame, the Para Brahma.
Dilwara Temple
It is a Jain temple
and is absolutely magnificent. The best thing was the way temple people managed
crowd to let them know history of temple. They later ask for voluntary monetary contributions but that I didn't found bad as they gave us some knowledge bytes in return for that ;)
It
was a good overall experience here.
Sunset Point
This is dirtiest of
the places that we visited in mount Abu. Although an enjoyable experience, this
place doesn't has much to offer. You can come here for clean sunset, which we
tried to enjoy. You should come here for high mountain views and diffused sunlight
sunset.
We left from sunset point at about 6:30 PM for Udaipur. Ride towards
Udaipur was very fun-filled. We enjoyed antaakshri, stories of travel heroics
from our driver and friends. We reached 'Udaipur, Venice of East' at around 10:30
AM, booked two rooms at a hotel and got dead.
Day 3, 20th Feb, 2012
We all remained dead
till 7:30 AM, then were suddenly waked by our alarms ;)
We started this day,
with a visit to Bhagwan Shiv's temple, as this was auspicious day of Shiv Ratri.
From here we left for a rope-way, but that rope way failed to impress us. So
from there we moved to Udaipur palace, which is a very nicely built fort, this one
was huge and beautiful.
Photography inside
this can be done only after paying Rs.200 fee. There were so many things inside here that now everything is messed-up in my mind.
From here we went to Fateh Sagar lake, this is a beautiful man made lake. Here we enjoyed boat ride, Nehru Park, Camel Ride and got some great photographs. This was a nice place but could have been better if we would have been able to enjoy Paddle-Boats as well, which were not working that day :'(
From Fateh Sagar
lake we went to Saheliyo Ki Baadi but we
got disappointed here not much to see here, total time waste. From here we went
to Sajjan Garh.
Sajjan Garh (Monsoon Palace)
This was the best part of our Udaipur trip. Their was not much inside this fort, but way to reach here and the spectacular view of Udaipur city from here was absolutely fantastic.
We reached Udaipur
station at 4:30 PM from where we had to board our train back to delhi at 5:20 PM.
