Trapped in Samode Palace

We are trapped in the Samode Palace. Samode is a small village about an hour drive from Jaipur.  The village consists of a lot of goats, a few people, and some houses along the road.  It's tucked into a valley in this mountainous region of Rajasthan.  At the end of town you come to the Samode Palace, an old palace that has been turned into a fancy hotel.  It all sounded great on paper, but the problem is we are a captive audience here.  There are no restaurants in town that would be safe for us to eat. There's not much to do here either.  This stop over was added in as a rest day for us and a little bit of a splurge.  There are two fabulous pools here, which we will make good use of today.  Actually, we went to one yesterday and basically cleared out the place in about 15 minutes.  Let's just say that there are many kids here.  This morning we hiked up to the Samode Fort that is at the top of the hill behind our hotel.  The ascent was up a long flight of stairs, 376 to be exact.  From the top we had some wonderful views of the scenery and the two forts on the next hill over.  The picture of the palace was taken from the hill top.  The trail down went behind the fort and past a group of villagers making a reservoir using hand tools.  Two men followed us up the stairs and chatted us up the whole way.  They were trying to get us to visit their shops in town, one even gave Brian a business card when they parted ways back at the hotel gate.  The whole place is filled with men tripping over themselves to get us stuff, at a charge of course.  The overpriced restaurant is uninspiring.  We have the same dull choices for lunch and dinner.  We are rationing the water here because getting a bottle of water is a huge ordeal.  You  can't just go to the bar and get one.  You have to order it from the front desk, wait for someone to bring it from the far reaches of the hotel on a tray, then sign for the water and service fee.  There's no wireless internet in the room, one thing that is free if you don't mind wandering around the courtyard in search of a signal.  Okay, enough complaining...  We are off to splash in the pool for the afternoon and try to rest up for the second half of our trip in southern India.  We fly out of Delhi on Wed. to Bangalore.

P.S. A family from England joined us at the pool in the afternoon, parents and a teenage daughter.  The kids are so desperate for non-Geyer company that they swarmed them like a pack of sharks in a feeding frenzy.  I had to call them off the poor people twice!  after the pool, we watched Men In Black 2 on tv.  During the movie we had our first rain storm worthy of the name monsoon.  The skies opened up for about 30 minutes.  Very impressive. Luckily we skipped the walk to town that afternoon!

Sent from my iPad