Udaipur City Tour

We’ve arranged for a private car today to take us around the sights of the city. At the time, the travel agent rattled off a fairly long list of things that we didn’t really understand, so we’re not totally sure what to expect, but we did hear “Monsoon Palace”, which is the one thing we wanted to see for sure, so everything beyond that will be a bonus.

Our first stop is a cable car that goes to the top of one of the surrounding hills and provides a panoramic view of the entire city.

Next, we head back to the Old City to see the local vegetable and spice market. It’s a microcosm of daily life, which Ang goes crazy trying to capture on film.

Not far from the Old City is the royal cemetery, which for 80 cents you can wander through in virtual solitude (no small feat in a country with over a billion people). Here stand the cenotaphs for Mewar rulers and their families going back some five hundred years. The place seems a little unkempt, mirroring, I suppose, the decline in importance of the maharanas following independence.

The last of the city stops is one of the popular gardens. We arrive at the same time as a few busloads of school children, who seem attracted to pasty Canadian skin like moths to a flame.

Finally, with the end of day approaching, we head up to the Monsoon Palace, which sits atop one of the surrounding hills and served as a place for the royal family to stay during the rainy season (as no self-respecting maharana should be expected to endure the rain stuck in either their summer or winter palaces). It’s mostly fallen into disrepair, but we’re told it provides the ideal spot to watch the sunset.

We make it back to the hotel for the tail end of happy hour, where a cocktail overlooking the lake makes the perfect capper to memorable day.