The India Chronicles 2000-2001

Lake Palace Hotel, Udaipur

Continued from Episode 4: Page 1

We try to stay in each spot a minimum of two nights, so instead of moving on that afternoon, we just took it easy. It makes our travels much more relaxing. Therefore, we left for Udaipur on Saturday, just a three hour bus ride. Udaipur is similar to Pushkar in that it is built around lakes and is surrounded by hills. It was built by the same maharana dynasty that built Chittorgarh, after the third defeat of Chittor. The seven lakes are man made, but after 7 or 8 years of little or no rain, the water level is way down and they are dry in places. It is also the only town so far that isn't flat. The streets of the old city are built on a hill leading up to the City Palace .

A big draw for the small guesthouses in this area is to show the James Bond movie Octopussy, which was partially filmed in Udaipur, each evening on their rooftop restaurants and our guesthouse was no exception. Our guesthouse had two screens, so we ended up watching American Beauty and The Patriot instead. Haven't seen a movie for ages so it was a change. I must admit I agree with the critics about the Patriot; all the Brits are despicable and Mel Gibson, an Aussie, wins the American War of Independence single handedly. Lots of blood and gore.

Sunday morning we did the City Palace, actually hiring a guide to take us around and give us the history. From the front entrance gardens, the Palace, the largest in Rajasthan, presents a high flat wall , with the most decorative windows and balconies on the top 2 floors. This is because the Palace was built on the very tip of the hill and envelopes the hill on all sides. Consequently, there is an inner courtyard on one of the upper floors with trees growing around a decorative pool. The part of the Palace we toured constitutes just part of the whole complex. Part of the palace is still occupied by the current Maharana and he has converted sections next to the lake into two luxury hotels. In addition, his summer Palace, in the middle of the lake facing the City Palace, was the first Rajasthani Palace converted to a hotel, but they are way out of our league. Even a dinner there is too expensive for our budget.

In the afternoon, we took an auto rickshaw a short distance out of town to see the Monsoon Palace. The Palace, on a hilltop overlooking the city, is closed to the public, but we went for the walk and the view. The entire hill was once a hunting preserve for the maharana and is now a nature reserve. As evidenced by the many paintings we saw in the City Palace, the maharanas sure did like to kill wild animals. No wonder they are now scarce. We had the rickshaw let us off part way up and walked the rest of the way up the switch backs. We were passed part way up by a motorcycle carrying two men and one of them got off and hailed us down. He said he was a policeman and warned us not to buy anything in shops to which a rickshaw driver would take us. He said the prices are vastly inflated to pay the commissions demanded by the rickshaw drivers. I guess there is a campaign on to clean up the tourist gouging. At any rate, we didn' t have any problems with our driver. We were hoping to persuade the custodians to let us into to the Palace to get even better vantage points, but we were not successful, even with the assistance of an Indian tourist with the same idea. Oh well, we still did admire the views.

Horse Dance

Dancers

Monday we arranged another tour by rickshaw to see several of Udaipur's gardens and to visit Shilpgram, just out of town. Udaipur's gardens are very well maintained, especially by Indian standards and given the lack of water. The city is very pleasant to visit and spend time just relaxing. Shilp means 'arts' and this village was the project of Rajiv Ghandi to depict village life. It is sort of like our Pioneer villages back home and is constructed very tastefully. They have built traditional houses from four states of India, Rajasthan, Goa, Gujarat and Maharashtra. People from these areas come and stay for two weeks to perform music and dances and to make and sell their crafts. When we visited, the inhabitants were busy repainting the houses with fresh decorations and building new craft stalls in preparation for the onslaught on tourists for a big festival starting December 24. It was thankfully uncrowded for our visit, but the inhabitants still gave dance and puppet shows at each different site. The guide we hired to take us around did a good job explaining the different cultures and filled in a lot of gaps in our knowledge gained on our other village visits in Rajasthan.

House decorated for wedding

Painted farm house wall

This afternoon we walked up another hillside to see Udaipur from another vantage point. This area is called sunset hill as it looks down over the City Palace and across the lake. There always seems to be a beautiful sunset in India, helped by the haze in the air.

Tomorrow we leave Udaipur and Rajasthan. We are going to Ahmedaban, the capital of Gujarat state and from there we plan to visit small tribal villages in the area they call the Kutch. Stay tuned for the next episode.

Take care and have a pre-Christmas drink for us. We are missing our beer and wine in India! It is either not available or outrageously expensive.

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