Udaipur described as one of the most romantic cities in India because of it's Lake Palaces and hilly setting, sounds like just the place for a James Bond movie if they had'nt already done it. The locals are very proud of this heritage so much so that every night in every resturant at 7pm they show Octop**** and of course we watched it like everyone else. We enjoyed looking out for the places we had seen in that day and of course it is Gemma's favourite Bond film so we don't care.

The lake palace is the most inspiring of the 2 as it holds the centre piece of the lake, however the 2nd palace further away in the lake is more natural with trees and gardens. It also allows visits without demanding a nights stay or an expensive meal. The beauty of these 2 palaces is very much dependant on the monsoon season and until Sept 2006 the lake dried up meaning that all you would see is 2 houses sat in what must look like a rubbish dump.

We stayed in Udaipur for 5 nights so had plenty of time to see all the sights, most of them had become popular because of the James Bond film. We visited monsoon palace by Tuk-Tuk as there was no way we were walking, it was a struggle to get up the hill with us in the back anyway! The views were really good from here, however it was a bit misty. The monsoon palace itself is where the king used to live in Monsoon season, it is very run down now though, so the views were really all there was to see up there.

We also went on a boat ride to get up close to the lake palace ( it is a really expensive hotel now) and to visit the other palace in the lake, Jagmandir island. This was a really nice way to spend the afternoon and so far this is the most romantic place we have been.

We did however walk for about 3 miles to look for a cash machine one day, which is when we came across the street markets, only to find that there was 1 about 2 minutes walk from where we were staying that we had already walked past a couple of times. ( we both must walk around with our eyes closed sometimes).

Another problem we had here was that when we were trying to update our web site, we went into an internet cafe that would not let us use his computers unless we alowed him to wipe our memory card as we apparently picked up a virus from somewhere. Matthew and i obviously went into panic mode as at this point we must have had about 1300 photos. Fortunately after messing around for about a day, we managed to get all our photos stored on disk and the virus removed from the memory card. We will be more careful from now on!

We both really enjoyed Udaipur, partly because of the sights and of course the fact that they show octop**** every night, but also because of the street markets we came across, that we havn't seen that much of so far and the fact that it was a fairly quiet place overall!!!