Day 4 Udaipur

Left train at nine and started our tour of Udaipur, a city created by maharaja Udai Singh in 1559. It’s the prettiest city we saw so far, largely due to its picturesque location with several lakes surrounded by hills. First stop was a walled-in garden created by maharaja for the ladies. Lots of fountains (actually small jets squirting water}. Since the garden is lower elevation than the lake, gravity propels all the water. Next stop was art school where they teach and produce miniature paintings, which Udaipur is known for. Supposedly, the skills are passed on from generation to generation, and descendants of the painters who painted for maharaja’s family 400 years ago are still involved. They produce their own pigments from natural stones that they grind to a powder and mix with resin. They use two types of brushes – very fine from the hair from the tail of squirrels and coarse from the eyelashes of camels. (no joke). They no longer use ivory to paint on but now use camel bones. Next we went to the City Palace, the main residence of the maharaja (who has at least 3 other palaces in the city, including a palace on the lake, which was used to film the Bond film Octopussy). The movie The Best Marigold Hotel was filmed in a town about near Udaipur, and Judy Dench stayed in a hotel near the city Palace, which our guide pointed out to us. The City Palace is very large complex and it was extremely crowded with tourists. It’s divided into 3 parts – a museum, a luxury hotel and the private residence. We opted not to go to museum but shopped instead. Later, our fellow travelers told us that it was a very smart decision because the museum was so crowded that they couldn’t see anything and were very uncomfortable. Then we also saw an exhibition of maharaja’s crystals with furniture made of crystal and ridiculous amounts of crystal everything. It was a relief to get on a boat to go to a little island on the lake for a quick stop. We had to be back on the train by 4 pm to start our way to Jaisalmer.