Udaipur

History

Udaipur was founded in 1559 by Maharana Udai Singh II, who needed somewhere safer to base his kingdom. The old capital of Mewar was Chittorgarh, a hill fort that had been besieged more than once and was proving impossible to hold. The valley he picked instead was ringed by the Aravalli hills and had a reliable water supply, which made it a far better position.

Mewar has a reputation among the Rajput kingdoms for holding out longest against the Mughals. While most of the other houses eventually made peace with Delhi through treaties and marriages, the rulers of Mewar kept refusing, and Maharana Pratap in particular is still remembered across Rajasthan for that.

The City Palace

The City Palace was begun by Udai Singh II when he founded the city, and then twenty two rulers after him kept adding to it over roughly four hundred years. Because of that it is not really one building but a run of connected palaces, courtyards and towers that grew into each other, which is why the inside feels like a maze of narrow stairs and sudden balconies.

It is the largest palace complex in Rajasthan and it sits on a ridge right above Lake Pichola, so most of the windows look out over water. One of the best known corners is Mor Chowk, the peacock courtyard, where three peacocks are set into the wall in coloured glass.

Taj Lake Palace

The white palace that appears to float in the middle of Lake Pichola was built between 1743 and 1746 by Maharana Jagat Singh II as a summer retreat. It was originally called Jag Niwas after him and it covers almost the entire island it stands on, which is what creates the illusion that it is sitting directly on the water.

It stopped being a royal residence a long time ago and was converted into a hotel in the 1960s. It has since turned up in films, most famously in the James Bond film Octopussy in 1983, which is why half the rooftop cafes in the old city still screen that film every night.

Lake Pichola

The lake the whole city is arranged around is not natural. It was created in 1362 when a dam was built to hold back a seasonal river, which was almost two hundred years before Udaipur existed. Later rulers raised the dam and added more lakes upstream, so what looks like a natural valley of water is really a system that was engineered over centuries to keep a desert city supplied.

Chittorgarh

About two hours away is the fort the rulers of Mewar left behind when they founded Udaipur. It is the largest fort in India and its history is a good deal darker than anything in the city. It has a page of its own here.

Read about Chittorgarh

Cultural significance

Udaipur gets called the Venice of the East because so much of the old city faces onto water. It also has a long tradition of miniature painting, where artists work in very fine detail on small sheets of paper or silk, and you can still watch it being done in workshops around the old town. Festivals like Gangaur and the Mewar Festival bring boats out onto the lake in the evening.

My visit

Arriving in Udaipur after the desert was a shock in a good way. Jaisalmer is all sand and stone and open sky, and then a few hours south there are hills, trees and water everywhere. The temperature was easier too. It is the sort of place where you slow down without meaning to.

The City Palace took far longer than I expected. I went in thinking it would be an hour and came out most of the afternoon later. It is not one building, it is a series of them joined together, so you keep going up a staircase thinking you have reached the end and finding another courtyard. Mor Chowk with the glass peacocks was the part I stopped at longest.

Udaipur is a lot more suburban than Jaisalmer, and I mean that as a compliment. Jaisalmer feels like it stopped somewhere in the past and kept going anyway, whereas Udaipur is a working modern city that happens to have palaces in the middle of it. It is the closest thing I saw to what a fort would look like if it had never stopped being used. The old era and this one sit right on top of each other and neither one looks out of place.

The best thing in Udaipur costs nothing. Almost every building in the old city has a rooftop, and if you are up on one around sunset the whole lake turns orange and the Lake Palace sits in the middle of it. I did that more than once. Everyone tells you to go on a boat and they are right, but the view from above is the one I remember.

What I would tell you before you go

Find a rooftop at sunset, because almost every building in the old city has one and it is the best view of the lake you will get for free. Give the City Palace a few hours, as it takes far longer to walk through than it looks. Boat rides fill up quickly in the evening, so book earlier in the day.

Photos

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