Christmass Eve

We left our little hotel in town and set out in a Rickshaw to find 'Mountain View' Lodge where we were to stay and also meet Gemma and Ben. None of the rickshaw drivers knew where it was so it took some time to find and ended up being miles out of town down a dirt track. In the distance though you could see this house that would be more at home in an eco friendly experiment in Switzerland rather than on the side of a hill in Rajasthan! It was totally modern house in design, solar powered and all that, fantastic looking and such a contrast to its surroundings (maybe not a good one) We unloaded the rickshaw and went up to the house to be greeted by Piers a tall, bald, eccentric English chap who had built the house over the last few years. He was very nice but very very posh and had a curious way of pronouncing hid R's that made me feel very common. He showed us to our room and informed us that a traveling band of Shakespearean actors were performing a carol reciting to a bunch of local in the village. We declined as they were just leaving and we needed to settle in. They needed up being very posh English public school types who were to put it bluntly pig ignorant and they did not bother to hide there bemusement that we were actually staying there. Who let the bloody ruffians in, eh?? We retreated to our room which was very nice but still did not have hot water. We were paying top dollar for this place and he did not have any hot water which I don’t think is on. I was writing a review of this place that would have been a bad start. The wankers, sorry, actors went off to the village to confuse the Hindu locals with some christen Christmas carols. As we were having a smoke on the balcony Gemma and Ben pulled up, thank god, as we were feeling very out of place. They had had a very bad journey down also so we started hitting the beers and Vodka.
That night a lot of people turned up at the house, various ex pats who live in Udaipur and some long stayers at the house. We had dinner, which was really nice if not enough of it and a bit of a boogie, which in the circumstances was quite odd! We kind of formed our own little group and chilled out by the pool (empty) until later in the evening when everyone left. We had a nightcap in G+B's room and crashed, drunk.