So, I’m just going along minding my own business when suddenly I feel like someone has stolen all my energy. The only time in my life I ever felt this tired was when I was pregnant, and I’m not pregnant. I even mentioned it to Todd, something I rarely do as he’s about the most un-empathetic person I know when it comes to minor health things. But then comes the next. A fever. A fever to remember. It’s cold on the ranch where we are but not as cold as I feel like it is, I feel like I’m snow camping and shaking violently to get warm. So as I’m pretty sure the weather forecast did not call for snow I gather I have a fever and my super scientific way of detecting if in fact I do is to roll over and touch Todd, he feels like a block of ice. I struggle through the night ultimately deciding my fever is too high and I need to medicate myself. Some Advil later I sweat it off. This cycle of fever, sweating to the point I could ring out my T-shirt and other interesting symptoms #pedialyte later I diagnose myself with malaria. We’ve been prophylactically treating malaria with an antibiotic we take every day. But some malaria is resistant to that. We have another anti-malaria medication but one side effect is psychosis so with all our other problems we opted for the slightly lesser treatment. My whole point of this rambling is that with a little research from the CDC website and even Todd being like “ya, maybe you’ve got malaria” after a few days of ups and major downs, I downed a treatment dose of the possibly psychosis inducing malaria medicine, I did not go insane, I did get a lot better. Without being tested you really cannot know for sure and it’s extremely unlikely but hey it’s the best two smart people and the internet could come up with.
So with that little hiccup out of the way I’ll backtrack to the whole few weeks of this adventure I left out.
Udaipur. Udaipur is as Indian a city as I think we’ve been to. It seemed to encompass everything we have seen and had the added bonus of being on a beautiful lake. Our hotel had 3 rooms for us. Two rooms on one floor, one above it. My first thought was that the girls and Todd and I would be on one floor and we’d put the boys above us. Then realizing the top floor had a view of the lake I quickly grabbed my bag and took the view room, making a verbal acknowledgement that my maternal instinct was thrown out the window when I was offered a better view, the hotel has 24hr security I rationalized.
The rooftop of the hotel had a restaurant with AMAZING bbq. Yes that’s right I said BBQ. It had chicken, it had...ok it had chicken but BBQ chicken when you’ve been in India for a month is pretty epic. It also had waffles with Nutella and ice cream for dessert, the next morning we’d convince the wait staff that in fact waffles could be a breakfast food and though not intending to get the ice cream too, to the kids delight it came with ice cream.
We wandered through the city, the best time was early morning, the crazy rickshaws were not out and you were not under constant threat of being run over by a motorcycle. Hindi temples of various sizes and decor had candles sparkling near people’s offerings. Stray animals wandered everywhere. We crossed a foot bridge over the lake to the other side where a temple has bells and drums playing. We had gotten a piece of banana bread which made us a friend of the stray dogs, one in particular with a reddish brown coat and friendly eyes sat next to me and practically had her nose in my ear. I gave her a small piece of the bread she gently took and laid her head by my lap. Instant pet. We watched the flocks of pigeons fly frantically out of the way of passing bikes and other passersby. Eventually realizing the magic of the quiet morning had ended, we headed back. After a couple nights in town we went to a Ranch just a few miles outside of town. It may as well have been 100 miles away it was so quiet and peaceful, at least it was until we got there.....
So with that little hiccup out of the way I’ll backtrack to the whole few weeks of this adventure I left out.
Udaipur. Udaipur is as Indian a city as I think we’ve been to. It seemed to encompass everything we have seen and had the added bonus of being on a beautiful lake. Our hotel had 3 rooms for us. Two rooms on one floor, one above it. My first thought was that the girls and Todd and I would be on one floor and we’d put the boys above us. Then realizing the top floor had a view of the lake I quickly grabbed my bag and took the view room, making a verbal acknowledgement that my maternal instinct was thrown out the window when I was offered a better view, the hotel has 24hr security I rationalized.
The rooftop of the hotel had a restaurant with AMAZING bbq. Yes that’s right I said BBQ. It had chicken, it had...ok it had chicken but BBQ chicken when you’ve been in India for a month is pretty epic. It also had waffles with Nutella and ice cream for dessert, the next morning we’d convince the wait staff that in fact waffles could be a breakfast food and though not intending to get the ice cream too, to the kids delight it came with ice cream.
We wandered through the city, the best time was early morning, the crazy rickshaws were not out and you were not under constant threat of being run over by a motorcycle. Hindi temples of various sizes and decor had candles sparkling near people’s offerings. Stray animals wandered everywhere. We crossed a foot bridge over the lake to the other side where a temple has bells and drums playing. We had gotten a piece of banana bread which made us a friend of the stray dogs, one in particular with a reddish brown coat and friendly eyes sat next to me and practically had her nose in my ear. I gave her a small piece of the bread she gently took and laid her head by my lap. Instant pet. We watched the flocks of pigeons fly frantically out of the way of passing bikes and other passersby. Eventually realizing the magic of the quiet morning had ended, we headed back. After a couple nights in town we went to a Ranch just a few miles outside of town. It may as well have been 100 miles away it was so quiet and peaceful, at least it was until we got there.....
We loved Udaipur!
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