Sunday, 3rd November 2019 – Udaipur

Liz Earle meets Black and Decker

After the frenzy of Jodhpur, Udapur turned out to be something of an oasis.

Like most of these places there is an old town and a new town and we were in the old down by the lakeside. Last year the lake had been empty due to the lack of rain but this year it looked stunning.

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Waterboarding for Beginners

The place was so relaxing, I got lulled into a sense of false confidence and decided to try an Ayurvedic massage.

Now I knew that Ayurvedic medicine is a whole body healing system but what I hadn’t realised was that they have been misspelling things. When it comes to massage, what they really mean is ‘hole’ body’.

I’ve had firm massages before but the guy I got had fingers that could, and did, crush bone. I had an hour of full-on massage that often led to big swear words that only served to encourage him. Relaxing it wasn’t.

And then we go to the facial.

I’d forgotten I’d signed up for the facial so it was a bit of a surprise when the psycho- therapist finished massaging my head and suddenly slopped a couple of fully loaded sponges in my face. Then he followed up with a big dollop of abrasive ointments that smelt nice but felt like a Black and Decker sander as he rubbed them all over my face.

He repeated the process for fifteen minutes. Part of me wanted to laugh. The sane part wanted to keep every orifice I had closed in case he decided to do an internal cleanse whilst he was at it.

Magical Knee Cure

While I was having my massage, the Ayurvedic Doctor offered to provide some free of charge treatment to Annette on her arthritic knee.. This involved a little old lady with fingers to rival my guy massaging special oils into her leg. Sadly it didn’t solve the problem and I’m sure she’ll be able to walk again by tomorrow.

A Bit of Sightseeing around Udaipur

We took up the offer of a tuk-tuk driver to show us some of the sights:

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And I think this last one speaks for itself.

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