A car took us from Jodhpur to Udaipur through the Ranakpur area. The scenery was absolutely beautiful and was made especially enjoyable by the fact our driver was unusually chilled out and drove calmly and undangerously the entire way.The only downside was his persistent mobile phone use during the trip when he would slow down so much that we began to wonder if the journey would be completed the same day.

Having oggled at the stunning scenery for hours upon hours we arrived in Udaipur very ready to disembark! We were warmly welcomed into our homestay where began a very memorable part of our Indian oddysey in Bond’s Octopussy country. Our stay in Udaipur was so marked by the care we received from our hosts Harinder and Parender and their son Al.

The family lets out one room in the house to guests and we ate all our meals together. Harinder and Parender went out of their way for us, and the boys really managed to recover from their tummy upsets during our stay in Udaipur. They really looked after us so incredibly well, we all felt perfectly at home in a safe family environment, in fact we felt like we were part of the family! It really was quite special and a real change from staying in a guest house. Harinder is an amazing cook, she’s got that ‘touch’ and runs a cooking school alongside the homestay. I tried to look in a bit and learn, fortunately she has everything on a website enjoylifefoodart.com so I didn’t have to commit everything to memory. There were big hugs all round on our departure, it was such an oasis of family calm after the chaos and noise of other places.

Of course plenty of other stuff happened in Udaipur, but I will let the boys tell their story of Udaipur – for me our homestay was the highlight of our time there.