Udaipur Palace Day

Udaipur day 2 was a tour of palaces, temples and parks.  Here is a link with some history about Udaipur.

WikiPedia link to Udaipur

One thing to notice is that the ruler was called maharana, and not maharaja - both basically mean "great king", but if you use the term maharaja consider it a bit of an insult that may get you 30 days in the local dungeon.

My guide took me to the City Palace where the Maharana lived. It was enormous. Only part of the palace was open to tourists. This line of Maharana's believed in a sun god, and everything from building locations to furniture placement had something to do with the rising and setting of the sun.

The entrance door we used had the a plaque of the sun over it, and the door  was facing east for the sunrise.

Just inside the doorway was large billboard with the genealogy of all the Maharana. It dates from 500 a.d. to present, and there are almost 80 rulers in the list.

We then started to go room to room.

One thing to notice is the use of semi-precious stones for inlay work, the use of mirrors, and colored glass from Belgium.

 

Here is an overlook from the upper floors of the palace.

There was a rooms for nothing but miniature paintings. Here is one of them. The paintins go from floor to ceiling. If you remember from my earlier blogs, miniature paintings are done using one squirrel hair as a brush.

There were rooms for artifacts also.

 

 

The Maharana had a stables on the grounds also. Here is one of his horses. There are other behind it, and they are all beautiful creatures.

 

We entered a few courtyards along the way. Here are two of many.

 

The detail in the picture above is impossible to show off because of the intricate inlay work. Here are some close inlay works around the palace.

 

Each inlay is made out of semi-precious stones. Each piece is created from hand on a grinding stone. Some of the pieces are as small as a very very small thumb tack. The ability to hold such a small piece with the fingers while shaping the stone against the grinding wheel takes years to master.

The work is so delicate that it's really hard to see the craftsmanship without a super close up shot on a very specific area. I equate this type of work to the miniature painting where only a squirrel hair is used.

After touring the palace, which took a few hours, we headed of to a nearby temple. There was a service in progress and the people inside where sitting on the floor chanting and praying.

The guide and I then headed toward a park which was used by the Maharana and his wives in the old days. The park was used as a place to keep cool during hot summer days.

 

We had a stop for lunch, and then we passed by a few shops. We stopped by Ali Baba arts,  where there were a few guys doing miniature art paintings. They have old and new, large and small paintings. You can contact them at alibabaarts@yahoo.com . If you want to buy some miniture art in Udaipur this is the place to go.

There is also Cottage Industries Exposition in Udaipur if you want to buy what they have to offer - really beautiful stuff. Here is a link to their site - CIE Link

As it got later in the day, the guide set me up on a sunset lake tour where I could see some of the other palaces on the lake. These palaces were luxury hotels.

 

 

This shot gives you an idea of where things are located. The palace on the right is the City Palace, and then on the left is the white palace, and I'm taking a pic from another palace on the other side of the lake.

 

Here are some pics of flowers I took during the day. I like the first two the best.

 

Here are a couple more shots I took which I like.

 

 

It was a great day, and full of amazing places. I want to thank Sushil Joshi for being my guide for the day. If you are in Udaipur, and you need a guide his phone number is 91-294-2488750. If you just ask your hotel receptionist for him, they will know how to contact him.

Tomorrow is a travel day to Jaipur which is one of the more densely populated places in India. I'm currently on day 14 out of my 18 day non-stop trip. So, there is still a lot more to see here in the ancient kingdom of Rajasthan.

To Udaipur

As promised, here come the monkeys. Today was a travel day from Mount Abut to Udaipur. While traveling down the mountain in the early morning, we came across a group of monkeys on coffee break.

The three monkeys on the left were socializing about local politics. They were not satisfied with the work being done by the road commission for garbage pickup. It seems the head of the road commission was in hot water for getting more than his fair share of the garbage being collected. The lone monkey on the right was mumbling on about global warming, and how the government should be responsible for giving out weekly rations of sun tan lotion due to lack of health care coverage to the poor monkey community.

Much to my relief, I found this mother and son playing this little piggy went to market on their toes. I was going to play itsy bitsy spider, but I had a lot of traveling to do to get to Udaipur. So, I said goodbye, and they wished me safe travels ahead.

The next stop was at a large temple area with a smaller temple next to it. Here are some pics of the smaller temple.

Here is a closeup which shows more detail:

Now off to the main temple which was huge.

 

The inside was spectacular.

While I was roaming around looking at all the intricate carvings, a security person pointed something out to me which was interesting. This is a honey hive attached to one of the stone figurines on the outside wall.

Here are a couple of other photogenic pics I liked.

So far this has been a great travel day. We continued over a mountain pass toward Udaipur, and I was able to get this shot back into the valley of the temple.

After a few more hours, we arrived at the hotel in Udaipur. I will provide more about this area in the next post.

Here is the hotel room.

I had a wonderful room on the top floor. Here is a vista shot from roof.

The sun was setting by this time, and it was time to call it a night. But was a great place, and what a great day. Udaipur seems like a really nice and romantic place.

Tomorrow, forts, temples, shops and sight seeing. I wonder if those monkeys are still sitting around talking about politics, or they have now advanced their discussion to the best way to groom ones fleas.

Of course, it's hard to end this day without a nice sunset.