Udaipur City of Lakes, New Year’s Day

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Happy new year to all our friends and family from southern Rajasthan! After a leisurely breakfast on the sun terrace, we head into town and Lake Pichola for a boat ride around the famous Udaipur Lake Palace Hotel and a visit to the Maharana’s Jagmandir island palace and playground idyll; far from the madding crowd of the old city 😉



From the boat jetty we head up to the palace complex and museum, still home to the current Maharana. We dutifully pay our entrance tickets and the obligatory 200 rupee for the right to use our “still” camera. Tiny corridors, steep steps, numerous ornately carved balconies and follies, courtyards and terraces make up this slightly dilapidated fairytale building. 2 hours later we emerge. Sauntering towards the Maharana’s palace (subordinate to the Maharaja) the customary whistle sounds as we straddle the gates. Having been drilled in the English school system our instinctive response has a Pavlovian quality to it (woof woof 😉 and sets us straight, No entry! We turn around and dive headlong into the narrow streets of the old town. If you enjoy dust, dirt, noise, near misses with bikes and tuk-tuks this is the place for you! So many shops, but everything is veiled in a shroud of dust.



Watching men wash their clothes at the lake Ghat we drink a coffee before wandering back up to the Palace gate where the ever reliable, but relentlessly reserved Govind waits patiently for our return. “It is my duty” is his mantra, perhaps more realistic than “You are my god” (Mukesh). We decide a quiet evening with books and beer is in order, and ask Govind to take us to his favorite snack bar where we buy hot stuffed chillies, hot stuffed samosas with an even hotter chilli sauce as accompaniment. Yes it’s very hot, very spicy, and the large Kingfisher beer is as much about pain relief as refreshment J.

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