Udaipur: the Venice of India!
The city was founded in 1567 by Maharana Udai Singh (who gave his name to the city), he was hunting here in the forest when he came upon a wise man /hermit. The wise man told him many things about himself that no one else could have known, so he decided he could trust him.
The king asked his advice about what he could do about his capital city constantly being attacked, the hermit suggested that if he moved his capital city to here he and his people would be safe from attack. It would seem that he was right, as this city has never been attacked (probably because it’s too remote). Our guide told us that even the British weren’t interested in Udaipur and were happy to leave the Maharana to his own devised other than pay a fee to the British for being left alone. (Isn’t that what the Mafia do??!)
The Royal family have been on the throne since the 5th century (no that’s not a typo) 88 generations have ruled so far and there’s more to come as the current king already has a son waiting in the wings.
and his late father who died last year
It’s a relatively small city with only 75,000 inhabitants, the palace, made from the same marble as the Taj Mahal (only not cleaned to the same degree), has been added to, and added to, for over 400 years, so there are a lot of different styles of architecture. Each new part had been butted up to the next and can be accessed by narrow corridors and steep twisting stairways to slow down any attackers (or maybe too enthusiastic tourists!)
Of course the best bits of the palace are now out of bounds for us plebs as one part the royal family live in and 2 parts are run as expensive hotels.
Whilst we were visiting there were hundreds of workmen constructing what looked like another palace inside the existing courtyards but out of plywood and polystyrene. It seems that in 3 days time a very famous Bollywood actor and actress will be holding their wedding here.
I’ve never seen so many huge glass chandeliers in my life. It was like they were constructing a film set. One can’t help but wonder why they bothered hiring the palace at all when they are changing it so much!!!!
Anyway, the palace is vast and our guide expertly threaded his way through, showing us only the best / interesting parts (we have seen quite a few palaces/Forts now so we were happy to take his advice).
It’s pretty much similar to the rest in that it has an entrance courtyard for talking to the people, smaller courtyards for more intimate meetings, rooms for personal use, accommodation for the king and his queens, with extensions added for kings and queens who didn’t want to live in the same rooms where their parents /grandparents /great grandparents had lived. I’m sure you get the idea. And, as it’s on the lake side there are apartments facing the lake, for the summer, and apartments facing the hillside to make the most if the winter sunshine.
There is one Maharana in particular that this armoury focuses on because he was a giant, standing at nearly 7ft tall (so legend has it) and to prove it his chain mail, extra long swords, etc, are here on display.
There’s also a replica of his horse who it seemed was as strong and brave as his master. Even though the horse was wounded it carried the king off the battle field and jumped a 16ft wide river in one leap to take his king to safety. The king changed horses and went on to win the battle. As you do when you’re a giant legend!!
It seems to confuse the enemy back in the day as to how many elephants there were when they went I to battle, the strapped mock elephant tusks to their war horses heads. Because you can’t tell the difference between an elephant and a horse!!!!
The armoury also had on display various daggers/knives which have small pistols built it, not very practical as you’d have to be within inches of someone to cause any injury. However, it seems a Bond film was shot here back when Roger Moore was Bond and in it he used a pen that was also a pistol. A replica is on display here.
You can tell I’m getting bored with the usual things on display in these palaces/forts; like garments, uniforms, medals etc! So I’ve tried to take photos of unusual things this time.
The artwork is also quirky. This picture is a bit like Where’s Wally only it’s ‘Where’s the king’ . Look closely and you can see a white horse with a red blanket with the king riding him. It’s like a timeline sequence of events of the battle over a number of days, all on the same picture!!!! He starts middle right, (don’t mix him up with the guys riding elephants!!) and moves across the picture about 4 times before turning up on the other side of the river (the one the famous horse jumped earlier, keep up😜). The white horse dies and a dark horse awaits the king who then goes on to win.
An annual event was that this square marble tub was filled with silver coins. One quarter was thrown down over the wall to the waiting crowd, a “free for all” ensued. So to make sure that the money went to deserving people and not just the fittest who could fight for the coins, the other three quarters would be distributed to various charities across the city. Our guide said it had originally been the weight of the king but they changed it to this instead. I don’t know why, I missed the explanation as crowds of Indian tourists pushed me aside to get past!! (They really have no idea how to queue or take turns!!!)
The guide said, “Look at the view of the beautiful palace in the lake. Ahh it’s foggy. OK lets move on!”
We saw lots of stained glass, mirror tiles, silver filigree, Chinese tiles, mirror rooms, etc, etc, etc.
It may be the Queens play room but it was set up for the king to visit of course!
In the rainy season if the sun didn’t come out the king could pray to this gold and silver version. It’s seems this family reckoned they were related to the Sun God. Obviously a very distant relative!!
There was one smaller courtyard which was used for meetings with the kings council which had 5 glass peacocks built into the walls. Everything is made from coloured glass, even the very fine lines of the peacock’s tail are tiny slithers of glass.
This was the last queen’s private room ie the current kings grandmother. The fan and the heater are run off kerosene. Phew that must have been smelly
After the palace visit, which took over 3 hours (and we missed lots out) we went on a boat trip to a man made island in the lake which was built 350 years ago for the Queen and ladies to go and enjoy the cooling breezes in the summertime.
There is another palace in the lake (the one I tried to take a photo of earlier but it was too smoggy) however, that is now an expensive / exclusive hotel so no riff raff allowed!
This is the Queens summer island, it’s ‘guarded’ by 8 marble elephants (4 each side of the original entrance.
Elephant motifs are everywhere.
After the boat trip we went to visit a traditional dance studio that had performances every hour on a Sunday.
We are getting quite blaze as we had seen this dancing for free in a restaurant earlier on in our tour, so we just commented that the last dancer we’d seen do this had fire in her top pot!!
One place we were told we couldn’t miss was the Garden of the Maidens, built just for the Queen and her 40 handmaidens.
It was built with 4 different fountains for each season on the year. I’m guessing now but I think they were….
We’ve done with cities now and are driving out of Ragasthan into Gujarat. First stop is at a minor royal’s palace which today the owner describes as a ‘Home Stay’ rather than a hotel (More about that in my next blog.)
