What you could do, if you have
some navigational skills and it makes you feel better, is buy your own map,
throw it into your bag. You might as
well wait until you get home to read it for all the practical good it will do
you. Your driver may well prefer to ask
about half a dozen different, random people directions to your next town or
hotel. There answers will most likely be
quite contradictory. The secret is to
hope that he doesn’t ask too many people directions, not unless you’re doing
some kind of survey of opinions. We
arrived in Udaipur in the dark, which in February falls like a heavy shutter a
few minutes after sunset. Our driver
didn’t know the city all that well and asked about ten people the way to the
Amet Haveli, a beautiful hotel and restaurant on the edge of Lake Pichola – the
setting of James Bond’s Octopussy. Now you and I might ask a taxi driver, a
hotel receptionist or a police officer.
Our driver preferred to ask: a cobbler, a shopkeeper selling crisps and
other snacks, someone who happened to be leaning on our car, a young girl
passing by, a boy trundling by on a bicycle and two men who obviously threw
themselves in mud for a living.
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