My birthday!Bonus photo: the Doctor and myself enjoying a birthday sundowner at the opulent Jag Mandir – he a lime soda, myself a lovely pot of strong, milky, spicy and sweet masala tea.
Photo of the day: taken from the hotel restaurant at breakfast time, showing Lake Pichola and the Lake Palace Hotel
After a leisurely breakfast we met up with our guide for a walking tour of Udaipur. First we went to the Jagdish Temple, one of the major landmarks of Udaipur. With a guide it was much easier to understand the symbolism of the carvings and statues. There are three animals represented mostly in Hindu art – the elephant (representing luck), the horse (power) and the camel (love – for some reason), and they were repeated in many of the art we saw over the morning.
With the guide we went over to the City Palace, the landmark of Udaipur. Pages about it are written in the guidebook and although it was full of tourists and quite hurried it was really spectacular. It was built on a hill on one side, so there was a stone edifice without windows for five floors. Inside, there was the furniture used by previous Maharanas (the local rulers until the last one died in the 1970s) – but apart from the architecture the most impressive features were the intricate paintings of battles, court scenes and everyday life (the local equivalent of hunting, shooting and fishing) – the paintings were made with deep natural colours and executed with paintbrushes apparently made from the local squirrels. (There were lots of stripy squirrels around so we weren't too worried for them.)
Finally we went to the City Garden which was a really lovely quiet patch of green with fountains and a rather weird museum of science teaching materials, like a couple of curvy mirrors (the sign said “to inculcate interest among general mass and students”) and a skeleton in a glass case.
In the afternoon we took it easy and I carried out the spiritual pursuit of Facebook and updating my blog on the internet.
Just before 5pm we took one of the last boats heading out for the Jag Mandir island – the ride took about 20 minutes and passed by the Octopussy Hotel and alongside some of the city landmarks from the river, giving us some great photos of both. At the island, which is a hotel for seven guests, we took tea, as in the photo, and enjoyed the views back to the city as the sun set. From the quay we walked back in the almost deserted grounds of the City Palace.
Dinner, taken in our hotel, was … curry! A dahl and spinach paneer with rice – lovely. We felt very comfortable in the hotel where the staff were outstandingly helpful and welcoming.
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