We had a very excellent half-day tour of Udaipur today. Our guide was very detailed and spoke to everyone, which is always a bonus. We started off my heading to the city palace, which is across Pichola Lake from our hotel. We walked through the gardens of the palace to visit a Jagdish Temple. It was filled with many ornate carvings, like many of the other temples! I found out that people leave grains outside of the steps as an offering to the pigeons, as they are a holey bird!
From the City Palace, we saw the two islands, Jagniwas and Jagmandir. The former is now a hotel. It used to be the royal summer palace, but was converted to a hotel in the 60s. This is where the Bond film was made. The other island, Jagmandir, has another palace called the Pleasure Palace- where the King would keep his many girlfriends! It was built starting in 1628 and has not changed much over the years. We didn’t actually visit either of the islands, but they were pretty to see from the main land.
The Palace itself was huge! 85% of the castle was the Kings and the other 15% the Queens. Although many different people added onto the palace, it looks quite seamless, which is rare. Apparently, they all agreed on the style, and it was continued from Maharaja to Maharaja!! Lots of tiny, narrow passageways, ramps and stairwells!! I quite like these huge structures!!
We then went to the gardens that were further away, but were reserved for the royal ladies. They were beautiful gardens...but more of the same!!
Mom, dad, and I headed back to the card store and went on a little tour of the painting shop- where only one guy was painting. It was interesting, but the sales get exhausting after a while!! Mom and dad bought a nice miniature on silk that represents Rajasthan well. I do like my little elephant card. I am sure I could frame that when I got home and make a nice hanging out of it!
The afternoon was spent at mom and dad’s hotel, by the pool. It was great to sit and relax – it is actually surprising how all of this touring takes energy!! The pool time wasn’t too long, however, because we wanted to go see the peacock feeding that was located in the nature reserve on the hotel property! (Just a slightly big hotel!) The peacocks were beautiful! I’ve never seen them fan up their tails like they did, so that was pretty awesome. They are very beautiful birds!
We had dinner in their hotel, and it was lovely. The servers were very worried about me not getting the buffet (because I didn’t want it...I just wanted the food I ordered) and were great about letting me have tastes off of mom and dad’s plates! And, they even gave me free chocolate ice cream for dessert! I don’t like looking so young all of the time, but I think between my free card yesterday and my free ice cream today, I did quite well!! If they only knew how old I really was!!!
Dad and I shared a rickshaw back to my hotel, in order to drop me off...and now bed!
-Allison
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