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| The Taj Lake Palace, once the summer home of the Maharanas of Udaipur, sits in Udaipur’s sublime Lake Palace like a sparkling gem that glistens in the sunlight. |
After a few days in Mumbai, the financial and film capital of India, we hopped on a plane and zipped over to the fabled city of Udaipur in Rjasthan. The city is a bit sprawling with the usual assortment of cows and wild pigs and dogs scampering about (after a few days in India, the street-side menagerie of animals won’t faze you) and a general lack of zoning, but when you arrive at Lake Pichola you will fall in love. Udaipur looks onto this man-made lake, a vast expanse of water with the Maharana of Udaipur’s City Palace anchoring one shore and his Lake Palace situated smack in the center. No longer a seasonal residence of the Udaipur royal family, the Lake Palace is now a wildly exclusive, boutique-styled hotel run by the fabulous group of Taj Hotels.
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| The City Palace, the sprawling shore-side home of the Maharana of Udaipur, currently houses the Maharana's home as well as two palace hotels and a vast museum. |
I have stayed in some of the world’s top hotels, and the Lake Palace is by far the most sublime, the most exquisite, the most enchanting of any hostelry I have ever experienced. Situated like some diamond in the waters of tranquil Lake Pichola, this 18th-century palace is a whitewashed, domed and crenellated fantasy pulled from the most fantastical of dreams. After taking the launch to the hotel (it’s guests only, so you will really feel like you are in your own palace), you arrive at this twinkling gem, its public spaces awash with colorful tiles, Islamic arches, lush plantings and comfortable seating areas. En route to your room you pass through a stunning courtyard where a flautist plays high above and catch a glimpse of a marigold-scented shrine and vistas of the lake sparkling behind arched windows. As you enter your room—perhaps the Khush Mahal, a sprawling suite with stained-glass windows looking onto the lake and dominated by a traditional brass swing (not to mention a house-sized bathroom filled with acres of marble and oceans of unguents)—you will fall under the spell of another time, when afternoons were spent languishing under carpeted arcades while you were fanned and perfumed and cosseted by legions of staff. Come nightfall, take in the tribal dances that are performed in the hotel’s main courtyard before blissing out at an al fresco dinner upon the rooftop looking onto the lake. Especially spectacular is the vista onto the Maharana’s former pleasure grounds, Jag Mandir, another island in Lake Pichola that twinkles come nightfall. As you sip a cool Indian Sauvignon Blanc, you will fall in love again and again.
Sublime!
P.S. If you want to see more of magical Udaipur, watch the James Bond flick Octopussy, much of which was filmed in the city and at the various palaces in the early 1980s.
Photos by Jason Oliver Nixon