Udaipur = romance pure
When I left Mumbai I was very happy to go out of the noise and pollution of this big city! I went northwest to the region Radjasthan which is in the opinion of many tourists the most interesting one of whole India. My first destination was Udaipur which lies on a little lake and is called the most romantic city of Radjasthan. On the first view it's obvious why! The big city palace lies directly on the lake and offers a breathtaking sight!
The construction of the palace began in 1526 and reached its today dimension around 1700. So it was built during the authority of the mughals (dynasty of turkish-mongolic origin). The muslim mughals ruled the hindu India during 200 years and had their maharajas in every region who built pompous palaces. The most famous one is Taj Mahal in Agra which I'm also going to visit on my India trip.
Though the todays maharaja is still living in a big part of the palace he doesn't have any policital power anymore (India is a republic now).
Here you see one part of the courtyard of the palace. The different high walls in front of the palace served for the maharaja to climp his horse or the elefant (the different levels depend on the high of the animal).
Did you know that some scenes of the James Bond film "Octopussy" were shot here? I can't remember the film exactly but I'm sure the scenes with the palace were very romantic....because the things you can see here are just amazing...
The picture above shows a small balcony decorated with gold, silver and different coloured stones and mirrors, which was used by the maharaja to watch the dancers and musicians inside the small courtyard below.
The colourful decorated balconies offered the maharajas not just a great view, but also shadow! Furthermore due to the open building style there is always a wind blowing through the courtyards and balconies which is not unimportant because it can get very hot here!
Remarkable are also the colourful windows. This are one way glasses which means that you can watch through just from inside but from the outside you can't see the people behind the glasses. Behind this windows the harem women of the maharaja were sitting because unfortunatly they could leave the palace not very often and if they were allowed to they could do it just with covered face. They were not allowed to show their faces other men...the maharaja was the only one who could see them!
So the poor ladies were sitting behind this windows and watched the goings in the street...
The city palace was used only in the winter time. The summer residence was the lake palace which lies in the middle of the lake outside the city. It is converted to a hotel and restaurant nowadays.
During the monsoon season the maharaja was living in the monsoon palace which lies a few kilometres out of the city on a hill. The reason of the choice of this place is obvious if you know that in the monsoon time (June-August) a heavy rain befalls the country. Though the monsoon brings the end of the three month dry season but is changing the rivers and streets into torrents. So the reason why the palace was built on a hill is clear: the maharaja doesn't like to have wet feet!
Beside the palaces you can find in Udaipur also other very nice buildings: so called havelis. Havelis are big nice decorated houses in which ministers and other important or rich people used to live. In Udaipur most of the havelis are built with lake view.
Here a nice decorated arch which conects to havelis.
Beside the visits of the sightseeing I also had a lot of contact with the local people. Udaipur is famous for its painters and tailors. So called painting schools "produce" paintings according to old indian art style. The special thing is that this paintings are miniature paintings with small details which can be seen just with a lens. Every painting school has around 10 painters who are painting around six hours every day. Of course they try to sell the paintings so you can't walk five metres without beeing ask for a deal. The competition is big (there are around 50 to 100 painting schools in Udaipur) so they have to try it with every tactic. So you're often invited for a Jai (an indian spice tea) or they bring you for free with the motorbike to every place just in the hope that you're going to have a look at their art collection later.
Also the tailors are very keen and promise to tailor a Armani suit for 150 Dollars for you. And of course the brother of the tailor is an Armani model. Very quick a Armani magazin from 2001 is given to you and you can see a indian model and in the background you see the city palace of Udaipur! A few minutes later the model in the magazin appears physically in the tailor shop and says hello to you...of course a lot of tourists buy a suit here!
I don't want to make fun of the Indians -the most of the them are really very nice people- but their salesmanship is a bit unusual for us Europeans!
If somebody want's to have a cheap suit just tell me, I'll bring you one....."very good, very cheap, special price just for you!"
Have a good time!
Andy
20.02.04, Udaipur, India