Day 4 - Udaipur

Today we woke up and went to the City Palace, built by and for the Maharaja (King) of Udaipur. We hired a guide and toured the Palace during the morning, before it got too hot. The palace was mostly empty - few tourists at this time of year - and virtually no non-Indians. The few tourists around were Indian families during their school vacations.

The Palace is located along the banks of lake Pichola, with great views of the Lake Palace hotel, which appears to float on the lake.



The _Real_ highlight of the day, however, was our 2.5 hour lesson at The Spice Box, a spice store / tourist cooking class kitchen, where we got a personal lesson from a trained Indian chef for about 900 rupees (US$12.50) total (for both). We cooked...

1) Masala Chai (Indian tea with milk, ginger, and cardamom




2) Kadai Paneer (delicious curry of green peppers and paneer). (Side note: here is where we learned that when Indian curries are cooked in Indian homes, there is much less sauce and much more "stuff" (e.g., vegetables, meats) whereas in restaurants, you have mostly sauce (too cut costs)). So the Indian food we eat in the US has like 90:10 sauce to stuff - should actually be like 50:50...see:





3) Malai Kofta (cream based cococut curry with fried potato balls stuffed with cashews)



4) Chapatti (also known as rotis - simple wheat bread)



Our full meal and teacher:



After this we walked about town...



...and then went to dinner along the lake.






A great day.