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.

Mount Abu

My next couple of days were spent traveling and looking around Mount Abu which is a hill station known as a cool get away from the heat of the lower valleys. There is a great link on WikiPedia which gets into some details on elevation, climate and history. For example,  the highest peak is 1722 meters (5500 feet). It's called the "oasis in the desert" because of the waterfalls, lakes and cool temps. Also of note is that Mount Abu is the only hill station in Rajasthan.

Read more about Mount Abu

Here is a panoramic shot of the town.

 

There is a large lake with rowing, and a nice sidewalk around it. Here are some of the pics around the lake.

 

There was a rower heading to what looks like a small temple built in the middle of the lake. The other pic is of the type of plants that were growing along the hill sides.

 

 

There were some small parks along the way with fountains. This looks like 4 small dragons, but the water was not turned on - sadly for me. There were houses built up some steep cliff sides. I don't think garages are very practical when building on the side of a cliff.

 

I ran across a temple area with some very old dwellings which were built inside the rock. My description here would be 3 bed and 1 bath with patio build out of a large boulder. Motivated seller. Will take all offers.

 

Once I walked around the lake, I headed for the overlook. There is a large lake below at the foot of the mountain where Raja's would hold up for the night before traveling up to higher elevation points.

The couple you see in the picture were just married, and a photographer was following them around taking their pictures. This gives newlyweds more time to spend posing for pics rather than asking other people to take pics of them.

 

The room was good. There was a view over a small valley area, and a large patio out front to drink coffee or tea while relaxing in the cool breezes.

 

I think the only interesting pic I took was a water shot which has some reflection around some green mossy growth.

 

I also visited one of the best Jain temples I've ever seen which was carved out of marble. It was incredible. Unfortunately, they didn't allow any pictures to be taken. Tomorrow, I will be stopping at another Jain temple, and I will get pics there.

There are a number of monkeys around. The best pics came while heading down the mountain as the sun was in a better position. So, my next post will have dancing women carvings in Jain temples and black faced monkeys with all white hair - dancing women and monkeys - it really doesn't get any better than that.

Jodhpur - Day 8

In the morning, it was time for some local site seeing. I headed for the Jaswant Thada which is a memorial in memory of Maharja Jaswant Singh II. It's made out of marble, and here is a link with more info:

Link to Jaswant Thada

The pic below is the memorial for the wife.

 

This pic is different memorials for other relatives and generations. The more affluent the person the bigger the memorial. What is interesting is that there are still relatives that exist, and when they die, the body is burned in a sacred location on the grounds. Apparently there are no relatives today that are worthy of even on of the smaller memorial stones, but being consumed by fire to ashes in this sacred place is still an honor.

 

Of course the main memorial is much bigger than the others.

 

As you can see, the main memorial is made all out of marble with intricate hand crafting all around. Because marble is semi-translucent, the sun filters through the stone into the inside burial area. Even today people still come to pay respects in hopes for good fortune.

 

The next site was a visit to Mehrangarh fort. It's one of the largest forts in India, and it's 400 feet above the city. This link goes into a lot of detail on the history of the fort and what is inside.

Link to Fort Mehrangarh

 

Notice the blue houses in the pics below. These are Brahman houses. I was also told that painting a house blue made it cooler in side. I guess Brahman's are the privileged few who can afford visual air conditioning.

 

There were a lot of rooms, and the link will help explain them. Here is a pic of one of them to give you an idea.

 

After the fort tour, I headed to a garden temple where the wives of the Maharja would go when it was hot. There were canals for water around the garden and many shade trees for keeping cool. Again, a lot of intricate carvings were on all the structures.

 

After the temple, I stopped by a few shops and came across a major exporter of fabrics which are created by local tribes and villages. Here is a sample of the work which is all done by hand. This export office was one of the largest I've seen. It was eight stories high, and it was full of stuff going out to different places around the world.

I promised the owner to give him a plug on my site. So, as promised.

Maharani Art Exporters is the name of export house, and the e-mail contact is maharanitextile@sify.com. If you are in Jodhpur and you want to buy something to take back to friends or for yourself, this is the place to go. Forget all the other export shops locally or in other cities, as the best deals are here because of the huge volume. I spent a few hours there just looking at things, and I never bought anything. So, window shopping is fine.

At this point, I called it a day, and I headed back to my hotel. In the morning, I stopped by the palace of the Maharaja which had been converted into a luxury hotel.

 

I was told that this palace was built before the Taj Mahal, and it inspired the architects of the Taj. So, the locals call this the mini-Taj. Right now, I'm still a number of days away from visiting the Taj Mahal. So, if this is a miniature version, the Taj must be enormous.

My destination this morning is to get to Mt. Abu where there is one of the best Jain Temples in India.

Jodhpur Day 7

On day 7, I was on my way to Jodhpur. I took one last morning pic before I left.

 

While heading out of the dessert, we med some kids who wanted to have their picture taken.

 

Pokaran fortress was along the way, and I stopped in to look around. It is currently under renovation, but what you will see is that the stone color. There are different stone quarries from region to region and each has it's own unique color.

Here is a link with some of the history, which I found interesting. It said that the first underground nuclear bomb was detonated in Pokaran. Since I didn't notice an abundance of five legged cows and sheep running around, I assumed it was safe to stay there for a few hours.

Info on Pokaran

 

There was a small temple residing on an upper floor with the walls where you could get a blessing.

 

Here are some guys who are doing some of the renovation work. They are carrying a small slab for a sidwalk. There is also a woman who was going around sweeping dust and debris from one corner of the fort to the other all the while being bent over at the back. I think I'd rather be carrying the stone all day than bent over smelling the earth all day.

 

Here are some other shots of the fortress.

 

There was a museum on some of the different floors which had weapons and clothing. I noticed these wooden sandals didn't look like they very good arch support.

 

This hallway had different gods represented. The rings and threads on the left handing between the pillar is where woman ask a god for a boy or girl baby.

 

A fort would not be a fort without a few cannons. If I'm a homeowner on the other side of the wall, I'm not sure my home insurance would be higher or lower. On the one hand, the firing of the cannons might place a cannon ball through your house rather than over it as these cannons didn't look in very good condition. On the other hand, the invading army might be stopped by a few cannon balls that reached their mark.

 

 

The sign says to tell foreigners these pottery items are relics of an ancient past because  foreign tourists will believe anything you tell them.

 

We then left the Pokaran fortress, and I stopped to take a pic of the quarry where the stone came from.

 

When I reached the hotel, I was very impressed. Notice that here is a picture above each bed. These are Raja's who slept here from other regions. This was quite the honor to be sleeping in the same bed as a former ruler, and since I would be there for two nights, I could sleep in the other bed to claim I slept in the bed of two great rulers of India.

I probably should add that these rulers were dead at the time.

I may also want to add that they were not in the bed at the time. Misunderstandings are so easily made these days.

 

As the sun was starting to set, I took a walk around the grounds. I discovered that this place was a garden getaway for the ruling Raja, and it was enormous. Just out side my room was one of the gardens which hosted a nice looking peacock who was eating an early dinner.

 

This is the garden area where the peacock was eating. The rooms are in the back of the pic.

 

At this point in the walk, I really didn't know how big this place was. I walked some more and I found some tent rooms which were available for those who wished to stay outdoors. These would be used in the summer. Currently, it was fairly chilly at night, and you wouldn't get the privilege of sleeping in a Raja's bed.

 

After this I reached a bridge. When I looked to the sides, I then realized how big this garden may be. What you are seeing in the right pic is a canal which encircles the entire garden area. There are multiple bridges with multiple canals which look 2 meters high and  20 meters wide. There isn't any water because that is only allowed during the wet season or during important functions.

 

Another garden area. One thing to remember is that I'm still in Jodhpur. Take another look at the quarry shot. This is truly an oasis in the dessert.

 

I continued to walk, and I found this center piece of flowers. I really didn't know where I was standing until I got another perspective which I will show you shortly.

 

I turned up a long walkway, and I saw the pic below.

There is a lot going on here. First notice the large slabs of stone. They appear three meters square. If you remember the pic above of the four guys carrying that one stone. You can imagine the effort needed to carry something that was 100 times as massive - if not more.

In the center there is a water fall area which looks like scales while around it there are different circular rows of flowers. What is being created here is a peacock with it's feathers out stretched.

 

The pic below is on top. In front down the walkway (upper middle of picture) is the center piece I was at before. There is a man walking on the walkway if you look closely. Behind me is a small lake which feeds the peacock water fall and will fill up all the canals. The Raja and queen had seats up here, and they would get to see the procession of elephants, rituals and dancing among buy a few items of entertainment.

I really wanted someone to turn the water on as it would have be glorious in sight and sound.

 

Farther toward the left, is a building and garden with the swimming pool.

 

I can only say this was a very grand place, and certainly worthy of the ruling Raja.

Here are some final pics of a few of the flowers growing in the different gardens.

 

It was a great travel day, and I was looking forward to heading into see the palaces of Jodhpur in the morning.