Udaipur - Steroids and James Bond

Udaipur (the city of Palaces and Lakes)was another wonderful city on our Palace on Wheels tour in Rajasthan. The city has beautiful lakes and another ridiculously enormous palace. The Lake Palace on lake Picchola (Mor Chowk)built by the Maharana Udai Sigh of Mewar, is like a palace on steroids-(5 acres- largest in Rajasthan) a combination of military and mughal style architecture. I guess many different maharanis have added to it over the last 400+ years. I have to confess that i did not go on the tour- i used the exucse of my knees because the guide said there were many steep steps, but my knees are fine. I really wanted to shop in the palace shops! the shopping is out of control. i will blog soon about the shopping god of India that has overtaken me and interrupted my history and architectural lessons.



The city is especially known for the white palace (Jag Niwas) that sits in the middle of the lake and looks like it is floating on water. We took a boar ride to see it up close, but you couldn’t get in because it is a private hotel. SWEET- a hotel sitting in the middle of the lake looking onto the expansive lake palace.

Supposedly, the James Bond movie, Octopussy, was filmed there. I don't know cause i used to boycott James Bond movies on GP as a feminist. Go to admit that i loved, not the last one, but the one before than in Monte Carlo.



Several times we have been told that the Rajasthan region has not had good monsoons in the last few years. I thought a monsoon was bad, but really they depend on the monsoon delivering 2 months of rain. Instead last year they only had 2 weeks. So the lakes are low and the fields are dry. When the waters are high, the palace looks like it’s floating on the water.

Udaipur, like all of these cities has an older part of the city that is surrounded by walls built long ago. The new part of the city is where there are modern buildings; there is usually a roundabout (courtesy of the Brits), lots of small stall-like stores and also more commercial ventures and buildings.