Udaipur – City of Lakes and Palaces

After a one hour and thirty minutes flight by Spice Jet from Mumbai, we landed in Udaipur. Udaipur is formerly the capital of the Mewar Kingdom, a city in the western Indian state of Rajasthan. I was founded by Maharana Udai Singh II in 1559. It’s set around a series of artificial lakes and is known for its lavish royal residences. City Palace, overlooking Lake Pichola, is a monumental complex of 11 palaces within palaces with beautiful courtyards and gardens. City Palace is famous for its intricate peacock mosaics.

Taxi driver dropped us at the wrong place in the city, as always the case with Indian taxi drivers. We, or to be precise, he overshot our hotel by about 200 meters. The dragging of suitcases on uneven road plus climbing up 30 steps of staircase to Mevari Villa Hotel all worth it once we were shown our room. The corner room gave us a 270 degree view of Udaipur. Beautiful.

No time to be wasted on arguing that wifi was not available even though the booking website said available. The friendly front desk staff, Salim apologized profusely about the problem with wifi in the room. We understood well that India is still behind in embracing the IT world despite exporting the most number of IT experts in the world!

Since it was already late afternoon, we went for late lunch across Lake Pichola. The chef took his time. We took our time absorbing the view and inhaling Udaipur’s relatively cleaner (compared to Mumbai’s), balmy February air.

The sun slowly set. Then we strolled by the lakeside for a dusking walk. The city started changing colours as the sun completely disappeared. We walked onto the middle of the bridge. The reflections of lit buildings and palaces glimmered on the Lake Pichola’s surface, a 12th century man-made lake.

In the picture above, on the left is City Palace that’s been divided into 3 parts – museum for public to visit, hotel and private residence. The current Maharana and his family, decendant of Mewar Dysnaty still reside here, in the private residence. On the far right, in the middle of the lake is Jag Niwas. It is part of the palace which is now a hotel, renamed Taj Lake Palace.

A small boat that we saw some distance back came into view more clearly, slowly. Two men were rowing their boat against the backdrop of Udaipur Ciy Palace.

Once in a while they bit the water surface with their oars.

I asked some young locals watching what I was witnessing, of the purpose of water-beating. All were clueless.

I asked an elderly man nearby. He said it was an ancient fishing technique. Fish deep below the surface got attracted to the splashes of water on the surface and came up to check. Then the fishermen netted them. I nodded my head and thanked the elderly Rajashrani with grey handle-bar moustach in safron turban. He nooded and smiled back.

I guess it was the sign that ancient arts were dying.