From our Tour Guide
“Welcome to Udaipur, the famed “City of sunrise”. Founded in 1567 by Maharana Udai Singh, from the lineage of the legendary Sisodias of Mewar – the decedents of the sun God. A city where the sun truly never set, where tradition and a strict code of heroism were happily united with a love of fine living. A city that has come to be an oasis of romance in the warrior state of Rajasthan”
From Lonely Planet
“Watermarked by whimsy and splendor, the Venice of the east holds stage as one of India’s truly seductive cities. Udaipur is an international destination unto itself with splendid Lake Pichola lapping against shimmering white buildings, and the Aravalli hills closing in to savour the view. The centerpiece of the city is the floating Lake Palace – brash enough for a Bond file (parts of Octopussy were filmed here), yet refined enough for his majesty’s pleasure. Packed with princeliness and passion, Udaipur is raw Rajput dreaming, with palaces, havelis and temples at every turn. Formerly known as Mewar, Udaipur was founded in 1559 when Maharaja Udai Singh II took flight from the final sacking of Chittor by the Mughal emperor Akbar. As Udai Singh and his contemporaries resisted Muslim might, the city grew a reputation for patriotic fervor and an aching love of independence.”
Chris and Lina’s Comments:
Our first night there, we went to bed pretty early and woke up several times in the night thinking that the hotel was infested with monkeys or parrots because of this weird screeching whistling sound. We learned the very next night where the sound was coming from. There is a puppet show on the roof of the hotel each evening and the whistling is made by the puppeteer.
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Here’s a shot of our room at the Jagat Niwas Hotel in Udaipur. |
Here’s one of two little sitting areas in our room. |
View of the Summer Palace from our window. It’s now a hotel and was featured in the movie Octopussy. Our tour guide has a funny story about Roger Moore filming on the streets of Udaipur. By the way, every single restaurant in Udaipur not in a hotel has nightly shows of Octopussy! |
Entrance to the Jagdish temple. From the Lonely Planet: “Only 150m north of the City Palace entrance, this fantastically carved Indo-Aryan temple was built by Maharaja Jagat Singh in 1651. It enshrines a black stone image of |
Outside shot of temple |
The carvings around the temple are unbelievable. There’s even porn. Apparently, the god of lightning is a shy virgin who is supposed to see the porn, be embarrassed, and spare the temple from a lightning strike. |
City Palace From Lonely Planet: “The imposing City Palace, surmounted by balconies, towers and cupolas, and towering over the lake, is Rajastan’s largest palace, with a facade 244m long and 30.4m high. A |
A shrine to Ganesh, the god of luck. |
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This tub is about 6′ x 6′ x 6′ and was filled to the top with gold coins which were passed out to the poor when a new Maharajah was crowned. |
City Palace view of Udaipur |
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Lake Palace view from Summer Palace |
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This was the dance floor of the palace |
This is the women’s changing room. Every surface is covered with a mirror. |
Our tour guide referred to this room as the “Woman’s exercise room” before we had a chance to see it. |
This incredible mosaic is all inlaid colored glass. Even the peacock’s tail feathers are tiny slivers of evenly cut glass. |
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This is the main focus of the botanical gardens |
Kids at an Udaipur botanical garden. If you want to see a bunch of Indian boys get really excited, just mention cricket or the Bollywood hit Lagaan. We barely got them to sit still for this picture. |
Cormorants and ducks on Lake Pichola, Udaipur |
This is a lake view of the Jagat Niwas Palace Hotel (on the right).The windows on the top far right hand corner are our room. |
This is Lal Ghat, viewed from the Lake Pichola boat tour. This ghat is also viewed from our hotel window. Each morning we could watch women washing clothes and men bathing. |
It was really bright this day, especially with blinding white paint everywhere. |
Cultural center in Udaipur. We watched several dances and listened to these musicians. |
After the introductory fire dance, we were all given chicken shish kabobs and invited to cook our own appetizers in these ladies’ hats. |
This guy was playing a Rajput version of jazz during the fire dance. He had these funky solos every little bit of the song that blows Miles Davis right out the water. |
This was the Rajput chicken dance. Seriously, it was silly and didn’t show off anyone’s talent. The poor dancer in the peacock outfit looked humiliated. |
This dance featured two women with 15-16 cymbals placed on their bodies. Each of the women whipped a cymbal on a string around their bodies to hit other cymbals on their backs, legs and arms with the music. It looked and sounded very cool. |
This dance is showing off how skilled the Rajput women are at carrying water jugs on their heads. At the end of the dance she has 9 jugs on her head and has also walked on glass. While driving through Rajasthan we saw women balancing about 3-4 of these jugs on their heads. |
We learned later in the evening that this woman was 5’4″ when she first started dancing 20 years ago, she’s now only 4’8″! |
 This puppet show was part of the cultural dance show we saw. The act was pretty funny. The whistles the puppeteer makes make it so. Check out the vid |
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This puppet represents a magician. The puppeteer makes him flip his head around the body and tip it like a hat. |
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Check out these videos which I recorded after I remembered that I could do it on my camera |
