Udaipur (Mar 14-15)

A few hours by train westward from the small town and hilltop fort of Chittor is a city of 400,000 called Udaipur. This city was made famous by the 007 movie "Octopussy" as it is an the edge of a lake (artificially created in the 1500s) with 2 very impressive white palaces built on islands out on the lake (where much of the movie took place). One is now a 500$ per night hotel (we took a pass on that - shocker, eh?) while the other is for day trippers on boat 'cruises' and those willing to pay 10x more for dinner than what you would pay on the 'mainland'. I should also mention that the 'lake' is not looking too much like a lake by this time of year as the rain falls distinctly in the late summer/fall and then nothing again until the next year, so the water level seems down about 5-10 meters. Below, day and night views of the Lake Palace from our guesthouse rooftop.

Back on the mainland is also another royal palace (and it is huge - 224 meter frontage along the lake) also built in the 1500's and they say the largest in the state of Rajasthan (which by the way has a larger population than all of Canada!).


Below is a couple of photos taken out on the 'day trip' Lake Palace with its carved elephant welcoming party and aspiring princesses waiting seductively amongst curtained windows.

We have seen now a number of Rajasthani palaces all dating from the 1400's/1500's and they share similar characteristics of domed cupolas and a white coloured plaster-on-top-of-stone look. They also have been added to in stages and so sometimes can seem like a labyrinthe lacking
symmettry in their design. They also have their most impressive rooms covered with painted murals depicting court life or hindu myths as well as a few rooms decorated with many stained glass and mirror-work. On the whole, you begin to see ample traces of muslim influence as most of North India was under the control of Afghan or Central Asian (Mughal) rulers at this time (the guys who built the Taj Mahal and other like monuments). One of many views inside the palace in the photo below...

We ended up in a guesthouse in the center of the old town, near the lake and the Royal Palace. This is the first time in North India we've been at a place that is heavily on the tourist trail. As a result, there is a high concentration of guest houses and a little ghetto with nothing but souvenir shops, internet cafes, book stores, etc. Luckily though, you need only walk 100m or so and you are surrounded by India again. Another sure sign you are on the tourist trail is that tourists arrive in clusters of 40 or so (the size of a tour bus) and outside of the major sites one can see the tour buses lined up waiting to re-engorge the hordes once they are finished their sight seeing.

We only see these hordes at the major sights and the type of guesthouses we in which we stay are in parts of town you could never get near with a tour bus like that. Most of these guesthouses are 4 stories high with roof top restaurants with amazing views of the surrounding palaces and hills.....stunning views with a very pleasant Indian meal for the price of a glass of wine in a restaurant back home! Once the sun is down the temperature is just wonderful up there....25-29 degrees with about 0% humidity. Even during the day the sun is scorching and you can't stay directly exposed to it for long, however, once in the shade the 30-33 degree temperatures are bearable on account of the extremely low humidity.

This old area of town is built on something of a hill and the streets are extremely narrow and steep and maze-like (and dirty and with smelly wastewater running in gutters down the sides of the street!). You have to be so vigilant about every move lest you are in the path of a motorcycle or rickshaw or cow coming from any direction.

...and below an example of the dozens of tiny shops almost always full of older men yakking away or having chai....or perhaps some business is being done in the midst of it all?

From our room we have a seating area in front of a window looking out over an old Hindu temple dome. In the evenings they play a song of worship (over and over about 20 times!) amidst the sound of clanging bells and drums which ring out over the town. From this you get a sense of the exuberance of Hindu celebrations as a contrast to the silence of Islamic worship and the almost mournful sound of the muzzein's call to prayer which one also hears echoing over the town several times per day.

We perhaps should have spent some more time wandering around the town or going to visit yet another palace which can be seen perched high on a hill on the edge of town, however being an edifice built only in the late 1800s we thought we could do without and with an awareness that our Indian Visa expires Apr 4, we decided we should press on the next day for the next sights of Rajasthan.