Udaipur with the Ghosh family

[flora]

We spent the post-Diwali week in Udaipur, Rajasthan, known as the Lake City.  We stayed with Dr. Neelu Ghosh and her family.

Dr. Ghosh and her husband have two charming, intelligent teenage daughters - Ashmika, 17, and Abiditi, age 14.  Their English is impeccable; Michael and I had to adapt our language to not talk down to them.  They're easily the most fluent English-speakers we've met in months.  They're also fluent in Hindi and Bengali, and proficient in Gujarati and Sanskrit.  And they're creative. Their family's home is beautiful, decorated equally in carefully chosen decorations and their daughters' own impressive artworks. And the girls are as nice as they are smart. 

Ashmika and Abiditi showed us around the sights in Udaipur.  We visited Lake Fateh Sagar, an artificial lake/reservoir in the shape of India.  We took a ferry boat out to the Nehru Gardens in the islands in the middle of the lake.  The ferry was packed with (Indian) tourists visiting for their Diwali vacations; it's normally not that crowded.

(Click the picture for more photos of Udaipur.) 
 

We saw Udaipur's famous fountains. There's the Musical Fountain, an elaborate modern water fountain that plays traditional Rajasthani folk tunes to a sound and matching light show.  It was a little cheesy, but oh well.  The historic Saheliyon-ki-Bari (pictured above) made up for it.