The Lakeside Palaces

Thursday 8th May

- Udaipur's City Palace
- a reunion with friends

mercifully, the night remained storm free. we skipped a rooftop breakfast, instead opting for a chocolatine and a soft drink at one of the incongruous continental bakeries on the route to the City Palace complex. entry to the complex is cheap but bringing a camera quadruples the price. there were some tour groups being hustled to and fro, but most of the visitors were Indian. we declined a guide to take us around, not least because they rarely seem to dwell very long and, with few exceptions, seem to repeat what is written on signs in front of you or in guidebooks. in any event, Udaipur's city Palace complex is - for a change - a ludicrously easy one to navigate, with well marked out routes for tourists to follow.

mural, City Palace, Udaipur

this proved to be very useful, as the eleven different yellow stone mahals (palaces) that make up the complex comprise yet another labyrinth of corridors and courtyards interlinked with truly tiny staircases, designed to prevent or delay attack. the suspicion remains that the palaces were also built thus because the ruling mahawarans - as they are known in the Mewar region of Udaipur - were all short in stature.

see what we mean.

at least two of the palaces are now hotels and not all of the remainder are accessible to the public, but en masse the various additions and extension make up an impressive sight and a rich history to explore.

as well as the usual armoury and a truly excessive number of rooms containing often very fine miniature paintings, some of the palace's more unusual features include portable tiger and leopard traps in the main courtyard for the mahawaran's key sport and activity of killing wild animals.

portable tiger trap and wild animal, City Palace, Udaipur

one man you cannot escape in the region is Pratap Singh, first son of Udaipur's founder and famed for taking on the Mughals in their attempts to seize the region. he was quite successful in his battles and subsequent guerrilla warfare and is still lauded in the region is much the same way as Admiral Nelson is in England. his battles, too, are celebrated or remembered like Waterloo. even his horse, Chetak, has separate statues around the city and a gallery or two in the museum. nevertheless, there's only so many pictures and paintings of the great man that you can take before you're longing for the next sculpted courtyard or striking design.

fortunately, there are more than a few such distractions. there's the huge two metre square basin carved from a single block of marble that was filled with 100,000 silver coins on the occasion of one ruler's wedding, to be then distributed among the citizens.

the small chamber filled with red zigzag mirrors and a reflective ceiling was an eye-opener and demonstrative of something of an obsession with mirrors or mirrored effects in the complex. married to a fascination with reflective mosaics and stained glass, at times many rooms and chambers appear rather garish and over the top, instead of the opulence and beauty we had seen in other palaces.

now available at Tiles 'R' Us

this effect probably reaches its zenith with the Mor Chowk courtyard, proudly showing off its three glass mosaic peacock wall relief sculptures, which our guidebook said were each made up of 5,000 individual glass and stone pieces.


while one cannot but be struck by the level of technical artistry involved, the suspicion that one is looking at Liberace's mosaic collection is not far behind. this effect was sometimes offset, however, by spaces such as the Badi Mahal (or Garden Palace), a lovely courtyard filled with trees and bounded by carved, pillared walkways. more involving was a room that featured all its walls and ceiling covered in large, continuous painted images or royal past-times, expeditions and elephant motifs.

City Palace, Udaipur

Udaipur city, viewed from the palace

the Lake Palace, just about surrounded by water, Udaipur

the impact of each new balcony, room or chamber varied enormously, often enlivened by quite excellent views over the city, Lake Pichola and the Lake Palace, but the overall effect was rather tiring, unlike the bounties on display at the Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur, for example. the pervading sense that the venue was a little bit, well, obvious was reinforced by posters as we left the museum part indicating that most of the complex's grander rooms and courtyards could be hired out for weddings, corporate events and concerts, a commonplace modern facility that nevertheless seemed somehow at odds with the history and majesty of the setting like hiring Buckingham Palace for a school cheese and wine event.

unsurprisingly, considering the nearby palace hotels and likely clientele (we were sure we walked past actor Billy Zane at one point), there was a branch of Anokhi in the facing courtyard as you leave the museum. surprisingly, it had shirts in Edd's size. amazingly, he even bought a couple, including one with a pink motif (see if that one's still being worn when the tan fades), the clean patterns and easy lightweight fit were a treat.

we brunched again at the 'highest restaurant,' the Sun and Moon atop the Udai Niwas hotel, but only because their fruit salads and lassis were excellent, even if their restaurant toilet was not.

an unwanted guest attempts to gain access

still not having booked our next few days' plans, we went to a travel agent (Mewar International) for the first time, rather than traipse the 8km plus round trip to the railway station. the manager was a stranger to soap and had death breath to match, but he secured our next two rail tickets for us, to Chittaugarh and then to Bundi, even if all he did was go onto an internet site. it was only days later that we checked the figures and realised that he had very obviously conned us big time - caveat emptor, we must have been sleeping that afternoon. we tried to ring several hotels in Chittaurgarh but the lines were other down or no-one answers the phone in Chittaurgarh. we had more luck with Bundi, securing at least one night in some converted old elephant stables, with which Philippa was very happy!

cooking vessels, Udaipur

it was already mid-afternoon and we'd not had our usual siestas, but Edd was keen to try and take high tea in the Durbar Hall, now part of the Fateh Prakash Palace, one of the palace complex's luxury hotels. although only R25, you have to pay every separate day you wish to go elsewhere in the complex other than the museum part we had visited earlier unless you are a hotel guest. when we had finally located it, we were only then told that they had some sort of conference in there that day! seeking a silver lining, we walked through the lakeside grounds at the front of the palace complex, stopping only to read the menu of the associated restaurant and laugh at how anywhere could charge R200 for plain, boiled rice.

stopping at the jetty for boats to the Jag Mandir and Lake tour, we had some of our drinks under large trees thick with sizeable, roosting fruit bats, squabbling with each other over branch space rights before their evening flap.

Edd had discovered that he'd managed to crack his head on one of the palace's unfeasibly low ceilinged passageways and had bashed his sunglasses quite badly, so while Philippa went back to her tailors to see how her trouser copying was going, Edd headed off for a watch seller opposite a stall at which Phil had bought a tunic previously. approaching more in hope than expectation, the smiley man pliered and screwdrivered the pranged arm of the sunglasses back into a semblance of shape and then insisted on taking no charge, he seemed happy just to have something to do in Udaipur's distinctly quiet off-season. by the time he reached the tailors. Philippa was only just sorting out a good natured misunderstanding regarding the deposit she had paid, but she thought that the work was of good quality, to be finished and picked up tomorrow morning. the main guy at the tailors was very keen for Edd to buy a suit for around £95 and showed him the store brochures, featuring photographs of lots of Westerners wearing beautifully cut suits in questionable styles. Edd wasn't really in the market, but he was forthcoming about what they were trying to do with the business and asked our opinions and chatted with us for a while over some chai.

we were close to falling over by the time we crossed the pedestrian bridge back to our hotel, but we were suddenly hailed from another rooftop by none other than our Jaipur friends Chris and Abby! over some skyline lassis and through sunset, we discovered that they'd ended up staying two weeks in Pushka instead of a couple of days, having both been quite ill successively. we had expected them to be long gone to Gujarat by now.

it was marvellous to chat with them and swap our latest tales and stories, and it was not until several hours later that we left them and finally got home and took supper, having arranged a meal for tomorrow night. the Panorama seemed to suddenly have half a dozen rooms taken and its rooftop terrace was a little busier. a full rich day with a cheering coda had taken its toll, and our room's cold, powerful shower again proved a fabulously refreshing primer to sleep, which we were determined to achieve (Edd in particular, having slept far less than Philippa). earplugged and brows covered with a damp cloth, he crossed his fingers and aimed for dreams.

love

edd & philippa