Udaipur day 2 – a Salwar Kameez & banana skin

30^th July – This afternoon Carol didn't bang her head so we went out to try some shopping, potential for disaster very high.

We walked away from the backpacker area down towards the clocktower where the sari shops & silversmiths start. We'd bought some bananas for lunch & munched away as we walked. Carol popped into a silversmiths to asked about some silver bottles inlaid with blue & green stones & tiles. I was left holding the skins & met a calf wandering down the street who seemed interested. 3 banana skins later she was my new best friend & when I retreated into the silver shop she was keen to follow. Silver shop customers here are all sit on the floor at low glass cabinets, customers remove shoes & are invited to rest on white mattresses to discuss weights & prices. The front half of a besotted calf mad for fruit was less welcome & there was a minor scene as the shopkeeper shouted at me shouting at (cute) beast.

After hours of fruitless searching & the occasional lark with the ladies we ended up buying a made to measure salwah kameez for C in a shade of mid-olive with deep-turquoise embroidered flowers with tiny mirrors in the middle. The pants are the opposite (for the guys = deep-turquoise with mid-olive embroidered flowers with tiny mirrors in the middle) the chiffon scarf that goes with it is a riot of all the above, but see-through. Carol says it's dark olive green & a deep teal blue but what does she know.. WE had at least 7 guys 'helping' the purchase along plus the tailor from a few doors down who clearly thought he'd licked out having to take C's measurements.

We pick it up tomorrow, wonder if she'll let me post a photo..

After all that we wandered home & as C went up for a shower I walked off to the beer wallah about 500m along the lake shore. All bottle shops I've seen, in Rajastan at least, are called "English Beer & Wine Shops" (que?) & have an enormous "8pm" painted on their shutters which I guess is self-explanatory. Jaki in Jaisalmer had already proved this was only the closing time for those not in the know but a clear curfew for tourists. Most look like prison cells & money & liquor are exchanged through a gap in the bars that would do Spokane jail proud. Staff must be grumpy to get the job.

Walking back from beer wallah with my bottle of Bullet (not less than 8%) beer, along the lake side of the wall rather than the road side, saw a circle of elderly men in western clothes sitting on the dry bed of this narrow arm of the lake listening intently to what looked like a sadhu on sabbatical. He had the long hair & air of other worldliness of a holy man but was wearing the standard slacks & shirt of his friends, odd.

Mystery possibly solved as 50m further on a café on the opposite bank wafted some Bob Marley at me (at last! Where 2 or 3 backpackers are gathered together there will be the Bob). Maybe the sadhu was a café owner & his smoke was not bindi.