The breakfast tables were located in what I think is one of their windowless conference rooms. It seemed to have had all their thousand watt light bulbs blazing in this room so it was glowing a bit too bright for my tastes. I've had the luxury of having an omelette every morning with my masala chai tea and fresh fruit and I'm kind of liking this routine.
I said I would post some pictures of the hotel. Here's our room:
The lobby.
And some exterior shots. The front entrance is at the right hand side as you look at the picture.
And the driveway coming into the hotel.
We met up with our driver, Amrik and our guide for the day, Derminda Singh a nice young man. He talked about the history of Udaipur, a city of half a million people known for all the lakes in and around the city and because they are all connected by canal, the city is known as the Venice of India. About 4 of the lakes are natural; the others are man made from damming a stream.
Derminda took us through the the City Palace, a sprawling palace that was once the home of the ruling family of Udaipur. The building is enormous. It's now been divided into 4 separate portions consisting of two separate hotels (Shiv Niwas Palace and the Fateh Prakash Palace), the museum and the private residences belonging to the grandson of the last ruling maharaja. The front of his gated residence is below.
To the left of the gates is an honour guard
The breed of horses are known as Mawari and are easily recognized by their unusual ears. They are descended from Arabian horses. Judith casually mentioned to our guide that she rides and would like to go horseback riding. We didn't have specific touring plans this afternoon. We thought we'd read by the poolside, but the lure of a horseback ride was a better bet. I'm not a rider and thought that it would be better if I didn't hold her up, so the plan was for her to go for the ride alone if it could be arranged.
Back on the tour, we found out that the city used to be walled and there were 4 gates to enter the walled city. The 4 main gates have been restored and are found within the city that has now spread well past the original walls of the city. The walls have all been torn down long ago as a result of urban renewal.
The tour through the museum was interesting -- it's hard to imagine such wealth belonging to one family. Once democracy came to India things changed. Indira Gandhi ended the state payments to the ruling families and striped away their powers. All the ruling families were then forced to find alternative income sources and many chose to turn their properties into trusts and operated them as museums to generate income to pay for the upkeep of the properties. I don't think the income has been enough to pay for all the upkeep or restoration judging from all the work that needs to be done to many of the historical sites we've seen.
It's interesting that there is usually a two tiered pricing for all of these historical sites with the tourist fare at least 3 to 5 times higher than the Indian resident fare. And there is an additional cost if you want to take pictures or video, usually 100 rupees, about 2 dollars. While I have no objection, I think this wouldn't go over well in Canada.
What I will take away most this morning on our tour is the interest some Indian residents have in Judith. Today there was a large tour from the countryside at the City Palace museum and from their actions, it was clear they haven't seen any western people. And my tall fair skinned friend Judith with her light coloured hair sticks out in any crowd here in India. She was a magnet for this tour group who were temporarily much more interested in her than the museum artifacts. Although none invaded her personal space or touched her, they all stared at her for various periods of time. Several walked up to us to have a closer look. I think it was a bit unnerving for Judith, but the experience amused me a lot and still does.
Here are two of them checking out Judith (she's weeping the striped shirt). It's hard to capture these shots as you don't want them to know you're taking their picture. This one was taken with my camera at chest level guessing where I should aim it to capture what I wanted the picture to show.
As we continued on our tour of the museum, we came across this same tour group resting in one of the courtyards. I jokingly asked Judith if she would like to have her picture taken with them because it would make a memorable photo. Before she could reply definitively, our guide took my camera and asked for them for the favour and arranged for both of us to be in the photo. They were very nice and there was a mutual curiosity among us.
After the museum we went on a short boat cruise along the area's largest lake, Lake Pichola. We saw men and women at a ghat, a set of stairs leading down to the water's edge for public bathing and clothes washing. The steps going down allow you to get as deep as you need to.
The picture shows Jag Niwas, an island in the middle of the lake. It is completely covered with a building, known as the Lake Palace and was formerly occupied by the royal family. This palace is now a high end luxury hotel, the Taj Lake Palace. For fun you should check out how much it costs to stay there. When I checked It was the same price as a nice car.
There is another island in the lake and a royal palace named Jag Minder is located there.
Normally the boat ride includes a stopover at the island but it was closed due to a big wedding. The site that was that former royal palace is also being operated as a big expensive hotel (Jagminder Island Palace). How big is this wedding? Well, it's been the talk of the town. The Hinduja wedding has over 800 people from 20 different countries and includes a who's who guest list. Apparently there has been about 100 private jets that have flown into town. Jennifer Lopez is performing as well as a few famous Bollywood actors. Traditional Indian weddings last 3 days- tonight is the last night I think. There has been fireworks for all the nights we've been here and the weeding has literally taken over all the high end rooms in the city (and there are a lot).
Lunch involved a vegetable korma and plain rice. Judith self diagnosed her recent stomach problem as a resurgence of a problem she's had for many decades. It's flared up because of the Indian food we've been enjoying, so she's going to be on a very plain diet for the next few days. I know it's cruel to continue to eat this great food in front of her, but I know she won't mind and in fact would insist.
After lunch, Derminda, was able to make a horse ride booking for Judith as we were driving around the area. We had to come right away. Judith was estatic, so I made her show me her best happy smile.
When we got there Judith was very pleased to find out that the horses were Mawari. She rode for a couple of hours while I worked on this blog and defended myself from a turkey who took a strong dislike to me..
Here's the turkey.
At one point it chased me until I got behind the safety of a chicken wire fence. One of the horse handlers chased it away, but it came back about half an hour later to resume the fight. Fortunately someone came to my rescue again.
We came back to the hotel so Judith could get cleaned up for dinner and had a lovely dinner at Rajwana Bites. Then back to the hotel to get some sleep. Pushkar tomorrow. We've already been warned by our driver of unscrupulous people there.
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