In our series of “City in a Day”, we bring you the world’s 3rd best city today and that too “Just In A Day”! Udaipur, like any other major tourist destination can not be covered in just a day but for the travelling generation of today revisiting a destination is the “in thing”. So, here we provide a brief guide to see Udaipur’s must-visit places during your first trip.
Udaipur is the stuff dreams are made of, and if you come here between July to March, the experience is further enhanced. The rains swish their wand and bless the city with abundance of water in the lakes, the lush green mountains, and gardens and a touch of magic. Life in Udaipur moves about peacefully at a slow pace which is a very relaxing change from the life of Metro Cities. The whole city can easily be traversed in not more than forty-five minutes from one corner to the other. The city scape is made up of snaking roads circling around lakes, gardens, lovely houses, beautiful hotels and vibrant colourful markets. A short drive from the Airport and you enter this beautiful fairytale of a city.
Lets start the day early, assuming you arrive the night before and rest in your hotel for the night. A beautiful jewel is shining up in the sky somewhere and can be seen from anywhere in Udaipur. Your eyes and curiosity are invariably automatically drawn towards it. What is it? The moon? A satellite? A watch tower on a fort wall with bright lights on top? It is a Palace - The Monsoon Palace or Sajjangarh. We will take you there tomorrow, promise!
A sumptuous breakfast at one of the many lovely hotels of the city and your car is waiting for you to take you to your first stop of the day : The Magnificent City Palace. You must hire the services of a well informed guide before you visit the Palace. Believe us, it is totally worth it. Trivia like what a particular feature in the Palace served a purpose of, or why the passages are so narrow, or why are the seats around a courtyard at different levels, will be doled out to you by an expert guide.
Begin your walk through the path that shows you the lake side, Lake Palace, Fateh Prakash Palace and Shiv Niwas Palace hotels, The Shambhu Niwas Palace where the Royal Family still resides and brings you to the front entrance to the City Palace Museum. Take out time to read about this well curated museum and the historic Palace of Mewar here. It gets more comprehensible and interesting to gather a little knowledge before you step in.
Just as you finish this spell binding walk through the Palace and move towards the Jagdeesh Temple, a prominent feature on your right attracts every tourist’s attention, this is the place where the Elephants were bathed. These look like parking lots where the means of transport used in those days were parked (!). Assimilating all the interesting information that you just received, you now walk towards the Jagdeesh Temple - another city icon. The lanes on both sides are lined with shops that sell Rajasthani Arts and Crafts. Visit the beautifully carved Temple before commencing your heritage walk. But a snack before that! What better than the famous Kachoris and Masala Chai at the popular Chai shop just opposite the temple complex.
This should give you enough energy to enjoy your heritage walk through the City. Jagdeesh Chowk is where we begin our walk from, from the side of the temple complex. Narrow lanes but immaculately clean and lined by covered drains, so narrow that you have stand in a corner almost cowering to let an odd auto rickshaw pass by. Two wheelers and auto rickshaws or our evergreen ride, the bicycle are the only vehicles you encounter in these lanes ; four wheelers can not access these narrow streets. Interestingly you can even hire bicycles or scooters here in Udaipur and ride around on your own, but our suggestion would be to explore this idea on your second or third trip. Let your maiden trip be a guided tour so that you get maximum out of the time you spend here.
Udaipur is a hub for miniature paintings and you will see many shops selling these exquisite pieces of art across the old cities. Miniatures are painstakingly and patiently painted on handmade paper and silks. A small souvenir in the size range of six inches by four inches would cost you anything between Rs. 250/- to Rs. 1200/- depending upon the medium used and the intricacy of the work. Though many art schools have now started using acrylic colours for the vibrance these colours exude but most of the old schools still stick to the natural dyes and make their own colours and mix them with home made glues to give their art longevity.
Eclectic prints on funky tee shirts and skirts wave at you from the hangers outside many stores. The chunky stone and silver jewellery beckons from the show windows of many small and big shops. There is something for everyone here. For a detailed account on the heritage walk, watch this space. It is soon coming up.
Our expert guide leads us through these by lanes, shows us the historical and dream-like Gangaur Ghat and Bagore ki Haveli (we will come back here in the evening) and takes us to our end point of the heritage walk, on the way showing us The Clock Tower or Ghantaghar.
We are sure by the time you finish your walk your tummies would be rumbling and anticipating some delicious Rajasthani delicacies. We recommend a Rajasthani Thali but if you wish to keep it light then there is a plethora of wonderful restaurants all over the city that serve up the most delicious food. Now, that is an advantage of being in a tourist destination, you don’t really need to read reviews about restaurants as most of them will serve excellent food lest they won’t survive one season.
Post lunch, lets head towards the Monsoon Palace or Sajjangarh. This is the most magical place in all of Udaipur, or maybe not as there are so many other places that are staking a claim to the top spot. But Sajjangarh nonetheless is a must-visit monument. The drive to the Palace which is quaintly perched on top of a hill is more interesting than reaching the destination. The path crosses a national park which is home to many wild animals - The Bear, Panthers, Cheetahs, many birds and a large population of our national bird - The Peacock and some crocodiles in a pond near the entrance too.
From the top at Sajjangarh the view of the city will just take your breath away. And if it is monsoons that you are visiting during, you will know why this Palace is called the Monsoon Palace. Interesting story behind it being an incomplete structure too but then that is an entirely different story for an entirely different time as Winnie the Pooh says!
Tea / coffee and sandwiches at the cafe at Sajjangarh if you still feel like munching onto something. Later lets proceed to Bagore Ki Haveli for the best cultural evening experience. Rajasthan is home to many tribes and castes with each one of them being rich in their traditional legacy of rituals, systems, attire, cuisine, arts, dance forms and music. Dharohar - a cultural show at the heritage structure of Bagore Ki Haveli is a beautifully curated show that gives glimpses of as many as twelve ingenious art forms of Rajasthan from Terah Tali to Kathputli to Ghoomer to Kaalbeliya, whichever dance form you have heard of can be seen here. This is such a captivating show that one does not realise when that one hour passes by.
Now the day has almost come to an end and you have had ample walking and running around so spend some peaceful time at the brightly lit up Gangaur Ghat, dipping your feet in the cool waters. Gaze at the jewel-like sparkling Lake Palace on your left and a golden pea-pod of an old bridge on your right. The Monsoon Palace will wink at you from up high. Walk back to your waiting car and head for a lovely meal while re-living the moments of the day. That’s Udaipur for you in a day - a capsule which can only sustain the hunger till your next major meal : the next long trip. You definitely can not not-experience the world’s 3rd best city in totality. Need a car to take you around and a guide to show you around? Click here.
