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  • 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,

  • subscribe to Vagabrothers, and turn on notifications

  • so you can get all the rest of the videos from this series.

  • And in the meantime remember to stay curious,

  • keep exploring, and we'll see you on the road tomorrow in Rajasthan.

  • Namaste.

Traveling in India is inherently chaotic,

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