What can I say about Udaipur except that it is the perfect place to cap off a relaxing two weeks in what has easily become my favorite state in India. The city is dominated by the artificial Pichola lake and is famous for being the location of Bond's adventures in Octopussy, a fact that is advertised ad nauseum by every guesthouse,all screening the film nightly.

We spend four days here but finish touring all the sites on the first, leaving us with nothing to do on our remaining days except listlessly wander the markets and take our beer at The Jasmine, a riverside eatery. This complete lack any itinerary suits us just fine, providing a much needed respite from the rigors of constant travel.

Lake Pichola at dusk. Above: Kids trying to tie each other up

On our visit to yet another City Palace, we see workers bustling and making preparations for an evening of revelry and merrymaking, for there is a wedding tonight. A stage is being erected under a complex rig of sound and lights, table tops 3m wide are being rolled through the corridors, silk ribbons are run from end to end of the Haveli and archways of dangling flowers -a truly beautiful sight- are being hung in the palace entrance. It seems that no expense is being spared and a polite inquiry to the lady giving orders reveals that this particular wedding will cost 50 lakhs or 5 million rupees, an amount that I assume goes a long way in this country.

More than any other culture I know, Indian weddings are the most splendid and sumptuous, with guest numbers swelling to a thousand or more and taking place over several days in a burst of dazzling color and sound. Food comes in such vast quantities as to question whether starvation was ever an issue in this country. We watch with keen interest as these preparations unfold as it proves more engaging than the palace we are visiting. By the time we leave, so enthralled are we by these activities, that the palace is forgotten entirely.

Wedding preparations are a massive undertaking in India

The days go by in a blur and Rajasthan sends us on our way relaxed, well-rested and on good form. And a good thing too because we're going to need it! The next stop is to Mumbai, and if Delhi is anything to go by, I'm sure we'll be tasting that roiling Indian stew of suffocating pollution, deafening noise, claustrophobic space and milling crowds.

Goodbye Rajasthan, you've been good to us. Mumbai here we come!

Indians have a slavish adherence to protocol and an unfathomable love for bureaucracy that is absolutely maddening. In a country that supposedly excels at IT, there is an absurd amount of paperwork that requires filling almost everywhere you go. Purchasing train tickets -a neigh impossible task- requires completing forms as long as one's arm made of thin, almost transparent sheets of paper and always in triplicate. Every hotel and guesthouse demands their guests complete table long ledgers asking for everything from passport numbers to maiden name to the date of your last decent wank. And upon my visit to the Lotus Temple in Delhi, I witnessed a hedge trimmer presided over by not one, but two managers who would point out errant branches in need of trimming before folding hands behind the small of their back to resume their landscape vigilance. Amazing.

You missed a spot

But no where is this in greater evidence than at the airport. Yes, we've all had our nerves tested by those unmotivated stewards of security at JFK, but India's bureaucracy is Kafka's "The Trial" made real. Before even entering the airport, passport and flight confirmations are required to be verified by uniformed guards, a procedure that needs to be repeated five times before even seeing the plane.

Security is a joke. Of the six guards at the security gate, only two are working: one diligently stamps every handbag coming through the scanner, certifying its safety, even though no one is manning the scanner itself. The other is on the kind of power trip that sees him attempt to get an invalid -a frail old man in his eighties- out of his wheelchair to be patted down. The old man is simply too weak and the guard, needing to pat down someone (anyone), makes the Air India staff member pushing the wheelchair stand security in his stead.

Trying to imagine navigating a governmental organization or making an insurance claim in this country gives me the beginnings of a migraine, so for the sake of my own health I better stop here.

(Camel) leatherbound notebooks for sale

City palace bling room

The lake dominates the town

Udaipur baazar

Women lining up for a date

Friends

Elephant for hire