Traveling in India is inherently chaotic,
but the best way to get around all that chaos is a tuk tuk. Hello
Good morning Vagabuddies.
Welcome back to Rajasthan.
Right now we are in the city of Udaipur,
known as the City of the Lakes
surrounded by lakes, and
this morning we're starting things off a little bit of chai
from the chai wallah here.
And we have a very interesting day planned.
I will let Marko bring you all up to speed.
I mean I'd rather just let you guys see it as it unfolds.
So we're going to go, first things first, to the lake around which the entire city is built.
What's going on with this mustache?
Okay. The mustache.
These guys are giving me grief for my mustache.
The truth is that I first got.....
Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me.
The truth is that I first grew a mustache when I was here nine years ago in Rajasthan, and the locals told me
I just had a little baby mustache just like Alex's little baby mustache, and I started pulling it
They're like just pull the edges, pull the edges.
And they showed me it will eventually curl into what it is now.
Mark has been pulling himself for the last ten years?
No, less and it looks like it's finally starting to get there.
You will see the transformation will be complete.
As I continue on this journey through Rajasthan,
I will become a Maharaja beard.
Mustache Man.
Well traveling in India is inherently chaotic,
but the best way to get around all that chaos is a tuk tuk. Hello.
They kind of just swerve around and get through any gap,
not like there are really any rules of the road here in India.
It's just kind of like... go for it!
Well, the first destination of the day is the City Palace here in Udaipur.
Udaipur is known as the White City, as you can see.
A lot of buildings are painted white.
Like many other cities in Rajasthan,
it was once ruled by its own Maharaja,
the Maharaja of Udaipur.
This is his palace, and we are going to go inside.
Honestly, this has got some of the best souvenir shopping in all the world.
The original bohemian style came from people who would travel
to the east and bring back cool stuff,
and this is literally like an emporium of awesome things.
There're leather bags;
There're textiles; there're cool rugs.
It's really cool. The mustache? Yes.
See some people appreciate the mustache out here.
He has a mustache, though.
I got Rajasthani mustache. That's cool because
you look like Rajasthani now. Yeah.
Thank you, man.
Ladies and gentlemen, a monumental discovery has been made.
I think I finally solved the
eternal question of what happened to Tupac Shakur.
He is here, and there is proof. I figured it out.
There he is.. Tupac Shakur.
Didn't go to Jamaica
He came here to Rajasthan to India to live out the rest of his days as a Raj,
which is not a bad call.
So this is a cage
to trap tigers and
trap panthers in that one over there.
All these gates are big enough to let an elephant pass through because
historically elephants were like the tanks of Indian armies.
They were heavy lifting materials that could carry things, and they could ram doors.
So you see the gates right here actually have spikes on them,
which was a defensive measure to stop elephants from charging
and hitting the gates with their heads.
Now we're inside the City Palace complex at Udaipur.
This is one of the most magnificent buildings in all of Rajasthan,
and it is the largest palace in the state.
It was the capital of the Mewar Kingdom.
If you remember, we said Rajasthan means
Land of the Rajas, Land of the Kings because there was about a dozen
independent kingdoms throughout this whole land.
And this was one of them.
The Mewars were a warrior tribe.
They fought off foreign invaders, most notably in a battle with Akbar.
Akbar was from the Mughal Empire,
and they were invading from around Afghanistan area.
This palace complex was built before that invasion
because the local maharajah had been walking through this area and found a hermit
who suggested that he change his capital here.
It's actually a really good defensive location because it's surrounded by mountains, and it's right on this lake.
So it made it hard for foreign invaders to come in.
Although they did lose the battle of Akbar, they became vassals of that empire and later the British.
You can see that this building fuses Mughal,
Arabic, Muslim architecture with Rajasthani styles.
All right. Well our tour through the City Palace continues.
Right now we're kind of like up at the top.
This is where the Maharaja used to kind of hang out, take in the view.
It's extremely crowded nowadays.
This is a very popular tourist site here in Udaipur,
but it's easy to see why.
This is the peacock. This is the royal bird of Rajasthan,
and you can see why because the
maharajahs are definitely peacock with their style.
They would go very ostentatious and flagrant.
It's a good, really good style,
but much like the peacock, they like to strut the stuff.
Something that continues to happen to us here in India....
It's pretty funny.
People would just walk up to you and ask for a selfie,
or in our case, we were just sitting on the bench,
and they just sat down in between us and
they demanded.. they demanded a photo,
but then again, I think that
Carlos brought up a good point that it's kind of like Karma
because we travel around and take photos of people all the time,
everywhere we go.
So you know it's only fair that... what can we not, can we say no?
I mean we know, what are we?
We have to say yes. So we're just going to be
floating around on Facebook with a bunch of total strangers
and smiling faces and doing the double peace sign.
All right guys it's lunch time.
We have some more like kofta.
We got some chicken tikka masala, garlic naan, mixed veg, and
bhindi.
Bhindi is okra. Lady fingers.
You're eating lady fingers?
Yeah. Bhindi
All the Hindi I know is basically just the menu.
All right you guys, we are in the middle of the VR shoot,
and we've stumbled upon a cow in the middle of this alleyway.
The local ladies are blessing it.
We're giving it a puja, which is a prayer or a blessing, and
Marko is feeding a cow.
I've just got to say, this whole trip is making me super nostalgic
of being here nine years ago.
And it's so different because when I came here,
I had one month of time.
I had just finished college.
I'd just finished working for four months in Mumbai,
and I had a month of free time just with no plans,
and that is really the way to travel India.
This is one of the most beautiful places
I've ever been in all of my travels,
which is why we decided to come back here to film these VR videos in Rajasthan.
I'm just blown away by how different
these two places are.
This is my first time in India
This is the third day that I've been in India.
My first experience was Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan,
which is much drier. It's bigger. It's louder.
It's a little bit more chaotic, but
coming to Udaipur was just such a surprise.
It's lush and jungly, and there's this beautiful lake.
There're multiple lakes in the region, and
it's just way more mellow and slow, and
it's been a very pleasant surprise.
I have to say if I had to choose between the two,
Udaipur is the clear winner for me.
Okay well next stop is this museum
Museum Bangore Ki Haveli.
It's right next to the lake here in Udaipur.
There's going to be a bunch of
traditional dances and traditional music,
and it should be pretty interesting.
So let's go check it out.
All right. Well, that's the end of the show.
These are the very talented dancers.
They did such an incredible job tonight. Thank you
Thank you. You want me to sit there?
Yes.
Okay, well, it's been an incredible day in Udaipur
just hanging with the dancers.
You guys did such a great job.
Thank you so much for the entertainment. Yeah
{Indian names}
Cool. Can I give you guys high fives?
Well, that was an incredible way to finish an awesome day.
Udaipur, by far my favorite place so far on this trip.
So much to see. So little time.
Every day here is like an eternity, but
those dancers were incredible.
Yeah, it's such amazing beauty the way that they were presenting themselves.
I think it's a really cool insight into the Reiki tribe.
That was the Reiki tribe in there in the traditions,
but we'll see more of them at Pushkar Camel Festival.
We're going there next or later in the week.
Anyways we're sticking around Udaipur tomorrow
We're going to do some more fun stuff
before continuing our journey through Rajasthan. So stay tuned.
And if you liked this video, give it a thumbs- up, share with your travel buddies,
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And in the meantime remember to stay curious,
keep exploring, and we'll see you on the road tomorrow in Rajasthan.
Namaste.