Everybody Like Udaipur

The great fortress of Chittorgarh, stronghold of Mewar (whose name means "land of death")*, held against the forces of the Mughal Emperor Akbar for five months in 1567 and 1568, until finally there was nothing left for the fort's defenders but to perform the ancient and terrible act of jauhar - a final display of Rajput chivalry in which the men would don saffron robes and ride out to to their certain deaths at the hands of the enemy, while the women and children built a great fire and threw themselves on the flames.

One person who somehow managed to avoid the jauhar of 1568 was Mewar's ruler, Maharana Udai Singh, who instead escaped to found a new capital some miles further west. He called it Udaipur, and on a hill at its center he built a delightful new palace, which looks down on narrow, winding lanes in a delicate and whitewashed town, all of it reflected back again by the waters of Lake Pichola. "Everybody like Udaipur," said the autorickshaw driver who picked us up from the train station, and if the founding of the place was less than heroic, it's hard to argue with the city's charm. Udaipur is indeed easy to like, especially when viewed from one of the rooftop restaurants that populate the skyline, offering a great vantage point as the sunset tints the blue-and-whiteness of everything with a pale pink, while temple bells ring and the City Palace begins to glow. We only stayed a couple of days, but of course we took lots of pictures.

City Palace rising above Udaipur

Udaipur street scene

View from the "Monsoon Palace" overlooking Udaipur.

More Udaipur pictures here.

*OOPS - not true. Marwar is the land of death. Mewar apparently means "long wand" - make of it what you will.

009 in Udaipur

First post since we arrived in Rajasthan - no picture uploads yet, but I wanted to mention that we're here. We spent two days in Jaipur, which is full of extraordinary sights - Amber fort, the Hawa Mahal palace, the surreal Jantar Mantar observatory, and the Pink City - the old town, throbbing with activity and overflowing with color. We're very glad to have seen it but we were also very glad to leave after two days, as it's the most hassle-loaded, annoying place we've been in India thus far.

We're currently in Udaipur, an altogether more laid-back and lovely city, with white buildings tumbling down to a (somewhat dried-up) lake, multitudes of rooftop restaurants, and continuous showings of Octopussy, which was filmed here. Even our room number (noted in the post title) is on-theme. Our guesthouse here is the best we've had since we came to India, and it's going to be hard to leave, but we're off to Jodhpur tomorrow and then to Jaisalmer the day after that, from where we'll be doing as everyone else does and heading off for a camel safari. Will try to post some pics when we have a chance - our two weeks in the north of India are shaping up to be kind of a whirlwind...