Tuktuk, Sir?

Udaipur is the prettiest city I've been to so far in India. The lakeside setting with the hilly backdrop makes for a pretty good base and the ramshackle new builds haven't yet completely drowned out the much more attractive, nineteenth century buildings. So it seems a shame that the trip revolved so fundamentally around money.

To update from two posts ago. There is still almost no money in the system. Cash machines are open again, but generally have no money. If they do have money they also have an hour wait.

Bureau de changes are only open to tell you that they have no money, so changing foreign currency isn't an option either.

No one has money.

This means that even if you do manage to get to a bank and get one of the new 2000 Rupee notes, noone will be able to change it. So you may as well not have bothered.

This meant that most of the conversations I had whilst in Udaipur went something like this:
Tuktuk, sir?
- do you take old 500s?
No Sir
- do you take US dollars?
No Sir
- I don't suppose you have a card reader in your tuktuk?
No Sir
- In that case, not to worry. I'll walk.

I racked up some serious miles around the lakes and hills of Udaipur.