Udaipur, Rajasthan, India (By Mel)

Namastee from Udaipur,
Last blog, we were on our last day in Mumbai. I have mixed feeling about Mumbai. It is a very busy city, with cars, noises, people everywhere… I love big city, but I have to admit that Mumbai is hard to navigate! Nonetheless I genuinely enjoy some things there, like the helpfulness of people, some experience we had like the Bollywood tour, we also find an excellent restaurant there. Anyway it was time to move again, so after killing a few hours, in one of the place we love in Mumbai, the board game café, we jump on a bus for the next 16 hours to go to Udaipur.
The bus wasn’t the most comfortable sleep I had, a lot of wobbling around, but I did manage to get a little bit of sleep. We arrive around 9.30am in Udaipur and we were charmed by the city as soon as we arrived!
This city is gorgeous!!!!! First a tiny bit of geography and history: Udaipur is located in the state of Rajasthan in the North West of India. The city was established in 1559 as the new capital of the Mewar kingdom. The descendants of the king of the Mewar are still alive today and it is the oldest royal line in the world. Udaipur is nowadays a city of 658000 inhabitants, where the 3 major economies are tourism, agriculture and mineral industries.
The city is organised around several lakes (the main one being the lake Pichola) and river. There are palaces, temples, shrines, old buildings all in the characteristic Rajasthan architecture. I don’t know much about architecture, but it is the kind I imagine when I think of oriental palaces in fairy tale stories! That might give you an idea.
Back to our adventures! The bus just dropped us near the old city of Udaipur. Tuktuk to our hotel, which for once is near the main attractions (I researched this one better!). We dropped our bags there as it was still too early to get our room and head off to discover the city. We are in the old city, and at every corner there is a temple, a shrine, painting on the walls, there is always something to look at. We visited a couple of Hindu temples: Jagat Shiromani Temple where a nice man there gave us a tour (without us asking) and asked for a tip at the end. Pretty regular occurrence here! He gave us some good information, so we didn’t mind giving him a bit. The temples here a pretty different from the south of India. They are mainly white but with a lot of carving. The carvings are in order from the bottom to the top: demons, elephants, horses, humans, dancers and gods and goddess. Then we visited the Jagdish Temple, one of the main temples in Udaipur built in 1651. The temple is still very active and host a lot of celebrations. The way to know if a temple is active, is to look if there is a red flag at the top: if yes, it means that it is active, if not, it is still a temple, but with no events happening. It happens that today was the last day of a Hindu festival, so the temple was decorated with flower and people were singing inside. We were lucky to witness this. The temple is beautiful. Well worth a visit. In the temple, there was someone doing some painting on fabrics. He explained to us how he was mixing the natural colours and using paintbrush made with squirrel tail’s hair (they don’t kill the squirrels, just capture them, cute some hair and release them)! The kids loved one small painting with 5 animals on it: a peacock for peace and beauty, a cow for strength and wealth, a tiger for woman power and protection, an elephant for wisdom, a camel for endurance. They decided to buy it together. Yeah one more thing to carry in our bags! Well at least, it is small!
After that we came back to the hotel as it was time to get our room. After a quick settle, we got back out to visit the palace. And it was amazing! The palace (actually palaces, as they are different small palaces inside the big one) was built over a 400 year period by the kings of the Mewar dynasty. It is situated along the lake Pichola. Even if the descendants of the Mewar dynasty are not kings anymore, since the Mewar kingdom merge with the republic of India in 1949, they still own the palaces. Some have been transformed into heritage hotels and other part into a museum. The place is incredible: mirror glass and coloured glass everywhere, latticed windows, inner courtyard, wall painting.., Breathtaking beautiful! There are also some exhibitions who are interesting: old weapons, furniture, musical instrument, ancient board games. But for me, the buildings in themselves are plenty enough to look at! The views are also superb.
In the evening, we went to see a puppet and dance show. One the way, we came across a parade of the end of the hindu festival of this last few days. Woman carrying deity on their head and dancing in front of the Jagdish temple. Again, the colours of India amazed me: all the women were wearing extremely colourful sarees, and it was a pleasure for the eyes to watch. Back to the show: the puppets were the one with strings (there are a lot of other types of puppets) and the show was great and funny. The kids loved it!
Then we had some Rajasthani folk dancers. The costumes were colourful, flowing with their movements, the smiles of the dancers were exquisite, their skills amazing. In one of the dance, (I will call it the pot dance!) the dancer started with one big pot on her head, by the end of the dance, she had 10 (from bigger to smaller). During the dance, she walked on glass, walk with metal pots under her feet… things that I wonder how they thought about! To sum up, another must see in Udaipur!!! And we were lucky, as at the end, the owners of the place showed the kids how to move 2 of the puppets and both Andrew and Emma enjoyed that.
The next day, Friday the 4th of April (we have been on the road for 3 months!!!), we did a walking tour (organised by my own travel tour agency! Hahaha!) I found a map of things to go see, so that is what we followed. I think I said it before, but I love this city. Simply walking in the streets is a spectacle for the eyes. There are so many palaces, temples, but even just the buildings are beautiful. I especially enjoyed the arch on the windows and doors and the pictures drawn on the walls. After that we visited a smaller museum in the Bagore ki Haveli, another palace originally built by the prime minister of the Mewar’s family in 1751, but that the Mewars ended up owing (because you can never have to many palaces!!). It is smaller than the main palace, but still enjoyable to visit. It has a puppet collection, an exhibition about royal wedding, a lovely inner courtyard and more.
This place is also famous for having dance show in the evening, so we came back in the evening for that. It was similar to the one we saw the day before. Similar dances, similar costumes, but the energy of the dancers were not as engaging as the previous show we watched. We even wondered if the wanted to be there! Don’t get me wrong, the dancers were talented, but they looked bored. If you only have time to see one show, the one called Virasat on Nav Ghat road is the one to go, not the one at Bagore Ki Haveli. But it was a good lesson for the kids as they are both learning dancing at home: the expression on your faces is as important as the movement you do. That was a good learning!
The next day, we found a music class for the kids. This was in a small musical instrument shop full of Indian instruments like Indian drums, sitars and other who I don’t know the name off! Andrew was first and he decided to play the Tabla; 2 hand drums used is a lot in Indian music. I think he really enjoyed himself. Andrew always had good rhythm and he plays the drum kit in Australia, so he did pretty good. After the hour, he had one rhythm pretty well mastered.
Emma was next and she tried the sitar, which is a complicated instrument. She learnt to do the scale on one of the strings and managed well. I think it is good for them to try a lot of different instruments that they wouldn’t have the opportunity to try at home. They both seems to enjoy it!
After that we went to visit the Monsoon palace (yes another one!). This palace is on the top of a hill and was built in1884 to study the Monsoon (hence the name and the position). From there, they could watch the clouds of the monsoon coming in and study them. The palace is not massive, but the view from it is amazing. You can see the whole of Udaipur and the nature all around. At the moment, it is a bit dry and brown, but still beautiful with all the hills/mountains around. After that our tuktuk (we got on for the afternoon) took us to Tiger lake which is one of the many lakes around here, but this one is natural. Apparently, there are some leopards in this area but they come to the lake at night: all good then!!! Andrew kinda wanted to see one, but not from to close. We didn’t luckily! Then we went to the princess garden, a lovely garden with fountains and statues, as well as a small painting gallery. It was a lovely park to stroll around for a bit. It was also full of squirrels to the great delight of Andrew and Emma who love watching them.
In the evening, we took a small boat for a sunset cruise. We stay on the bank for a while and we were thinking we were about to miss the sunset, but they know what they are doing. When we finally took off, it was at the perfect time to see the sun set behind a beautiful building, and then after a bend in the river behind a hill. They had the timing perfectly sorted! The light on the lake, on the hills and on all those amazing building of Udaipur was pretty magical. Then dinner on a rooftop restaurant to admire the night lights and bedtime!
For our last full day in Udaipur, we decided to go visit another UNESCO world heritage monument: the Kumbhalgarh fort. On the way there, we stopped at the Ranakpur Jain Temple. And I am so glad we did: it is one of the most beautifullest (the -est is to amplify the word!!) temple ever! First of all, what is a Jainism; because I didn’t really know. It is an Indian religion (around 5 millions Jains in India and more all around the world) who is based on the principle of self-realisation. Like Buddhism and Hinduism, Jain believe good karma will help your soul to self-realised which is reaching enlightenment. To have good karma, the main thing is to not hurt or be the cause direct or indirect of another soul being hurt. The Jains believe every living thing, human, animal (from the smallest ant to be biggest elephant), plants and even things like water and air, have a soul. In order to not hurt another soul, they adhere to a very strict code of non-violence. This includes obviously not eating any animal and even no root vegetable, as taking the root will be killing the plant. I do like that way of thinking. There is way more about the Jain religion, but I am not an expert and I don’t want to say wrong thing about. But it is interesting to read about it. One more thing about Jainism: Gandhi’s family, while not Jains, were influence by this religion and it shaped Ghandi’s principle of non-violence, which I admire and wish more people were too, especially with the state of the world at the moment.
Back to the temple! It was built in in the 15th century and took around 50 years to be finished. The temple is a grand white marble structure spread over 4,500 m2 with 1444 marble pillars, twenty-nine halls, eighty domes and 426 columns, and everywhere you look there is a beautiful carving. There is Jains symbols everywhere. When you visit it, you get an audio guide which explains some of the symbols, but I must admit the surplus of information didn’t all stick! All I can say is that if you are around, this should be at the very top of your list.
After the temple, we went to the fort. This fort was built during the 15th century as well, by Rana Kumbha, the Mewar ruler of the time. This fort is known to have the second longest wall in the world, after the wall of China (thus being sometime called the Great Wall of India). The wall is 36km long (the wall of China is slightly longer!!!). To get to the top, you need to walk a 1km up a steep road, but the views from the top are worth it. The fort inside is empty, and not much to look at, but it is fun to walk around the outside and found small passage between different part of the fort. We also of course, walked on the wall, so we could say we walk on the second longest wall in the world! Yeah!
The fort has a light show in the evening, so we stayed (despite having a 2 hours drive back after). Well, maybe we should have skipped this one. The light show wasn’t even on the fort; well, some lights were on the fort, but most of them on a small part of the wall and one of the temples near the fort. It was not super impressive. We stay because we thought that at the end, the whole fort would be lit up. Nope! Completely dark. Not one light on it. Pretty disappointed. No more light show in India we think!!!
2 hours driving back, with the kids falling asleep in the taxi and be panicking because the driver was in a hurry to go back home I guess, and there was no seat belt at the back (pretty usual in India) . We made it safely back and went straight to sleep as the next day, we are on the move again.
Next stop: Jodhpur!
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