The hotel that we had booked in Udaipur had claimed a view of lake Picchola – it indeed was a view of the lake, but mossy green far end of it – con job of a place! The consolation was that the rooms were nice and clean, the parking was safe for the bike and we would be spending the whole day out anyway.  We decided to stay.

This is day 6 of the ride and if you’ve missed the story till now, you can see the earlier 5 days on The Big 2009 Ride page.

It was a no-ride day, with a tour of some of the sights of Udaipur planned. We took a rickshaw to the Udaipur palace. As usual we had loads of ‘guides’ offering to take us around the place. Of course we chose one, since by now our experience with a guide accompanying us was that it usually is quite entertaining, if not anything else 😉

The small walk from the main entrance to the palace was the tourist counter offering different ‘packaged’ tickets. We bought the one that allowed us to visit the Palace, Durbar Hall and Jagmandir palace with an audio guide to the Durbar Hall.

Since it was about 10 in the morning, we decided to take a tour of the palace first, since from the outside, the palace looked quite a huge structure. The fountains run all through the middle of the outer courtyard, with one side lined by what were stables and the other side by the Palace itself. At the very entrance of the palace we noticed cages of all sizes, which the guide mentioned were apparently for hounds and even some tigers.

The Symbol of Mewar, the Sun, is everywhere – on all gates, doors and walls. Only a part of the palace is open to the public. Another part of the palace has been converted into Fateh Prakash Palace Hotel overlooking the lake and the rest of the palace is still private quarters of the royal family.

The inside of the palace houses a museum mainly of war time artefacts – swords, knives, guns and sharpnels. Each of these have descriptions of what it was and how it was used. The museum also had a tribute to the legendary war horse of Maharana Pratap, Chethak. The guide then took us through the palace’s several rooms that had housed members of the royal family through generations. Some of the rooms were embellished with mirrors of different cuts and brilliantly lit, while there were some other rooms that had tinted glass that reflected light from outside producing a kaleidoscopic effect and then there were some which had lovely furnishings and chandeliers (Little did we know at this point that the Durbar Hall we visited later would set a new standard for chandeliers!)

Each courtyard we passed through were different – the way the tiles were laid, patterns, paintings, colors and even textures. The tiles were apparently sourced from China and central Europe. The art of course was local. Each of the domes in the palace was mounted with crystal, again, in varied colors and shapes. Crystal and Glass is everywhere including the inlay work around the entrance arches to each section of the palace. The corridors were lined with plush carpets – yes, Persian.

The open terrace is lined with full grown trees and provides a soothing view of the lake Pichola. I must say that the palace is very well maintained with benches everywhere for visitors to rest for a bit or even let it all soak in 🙂

If you are a fan of Indian history and the personalities that shaped it, you cannot not be affected by what you see in places such as these. By the time we finished the tour of the palace, we were a tad bit disoriented. We paid the guide who very cheekily mentioned that we could choose to have ‘English Style’ tea at a part of the palace courtyard that was converted into a cafe at Rs.200, which might be worth it since the current Prince of Udaipur was at the Cafe or walk outside and have our usual Rs.5 tea :D. We decided to just rest at the foot of the fountain and take some pictures. We saw the Prince chat with almost everyone he passed, patting the guards on their back, talking to the tourists and at one point waved and said hello to us as well 🙂 Comes with the designation I guess!

The search for a place to have lunch took us through some of the gullies of Udaipur. A kid (who probably earned his living by taking the tourists to the restaurant) came up to us at the palace entrance and asked us if we wanted to have lunch and he could take us to a nice place. We went through a maze of alleys for about 10 minutes and got to a parking garage with a couple of bullets, one of them painted with Nazi insignia.

Wondering where the kid had got us to, we went on a little further to find that this was the back entrance to a nice restaurant. We paid the kid a little something and off he ran, probably to fetch the next batch of customers, but not without hurriedly telling us to “just keep climbing up” to get back to the palace entrance. The kid had led us to a quiet and nice restaurant with a view of the lake through Jharokas. We ended up having a nice and quiet extended lunch of Beers, Roghan Gosht, Rotis, Biryani and Kheer 😛

The Durbar Hall is situated next to the main palace. This had an audio guide available that took us through the place with descriptions of the history behind it. The first attraction of the Durbar Hall the four mammoth crystal chandeliers that hang from its ceilings, the largest in the world. We stood transfixed just looking at the massive structure and trying to imagine how they managed to hang it up there.

The second attraction were the entire array of crystal exhibits overlooking the Durbar Hall. The crystals were made to order from F&C Osler for Maharana Sajjan Singh, which he never got to see because of his early death. They lay packed in boxes until very recently, the current king, Arvind Singh Mewar decided it to display it to the public. The collection had almost every household item made in crystal. Amongst the collection are a sofa set, an entire bed and even a double seated swing, all made of crystal 😮 Indulgence? Nah! I look at it as prosperity 🙂

Once the tour is complete, we were given a taste of royalty – a complimentary cup of tea with biscuits were served at the tables overlooking the lake 🙂

We had to take a ferry ride to get to Jagmandir palace. The ferry point was just outside of Durbar Hall. A 15 minute ride on Lake Pichola, with a beautiful view of the Fateh Prakash Palace, crossing the Lake Palace, took us to Jagmandir.

As with all heritage palaces in Rajasthan, Jagmandir too had a cafe with jacked up prices for everything. To add to the ambiance was live music of Jal-tarang and tabla.  The rest of the palace has a huge garden with walkways and courtyards.   We liked the ferry ride more than the place itself, since there was nothing much to see there.

As the sun set, we headed out towards to city to shop for some memorabilia and artefacts, which the shopkeeper kindly agreed to courier home. A quick dinner back at the hotel and we were packed and ready to cross over into Gujarat the next day.

Udaipur, Lake Pichola

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