Sunday, October 27, 2013

Stay in a Rajasthani Palace built in 1760. Udaipur, INDIA

Friday, 25th until Monday, 28th October

What a beautiful Building, a seven-storey Fort Palace, I have no words to describe it. The palace was bought by an industrial family named PODDARS in 1984, the renovation took 7, yes seven years and a team of 750 people. They turned the palace into an all suite luxury hotel by year 2000. Every room or balcony with day-beds we see is for the use of hotel guests.

Saturday

Pictures will show you, the feeling can not be captured, it has to be experienced. Walking into nooks, balconies, stairways this morning was stunning. It is the beauty of the place which leaves one in awe.




We got together with 3 other crew members, hired a car including driver, and went into town to view the City Palace, buy some spices and we wanted to visit the market. Before we even got near the City Palace, the roads leading into mid-town were blocked, traffic jams, police, people, scooters etc. We told the driver to turn around to go back to the hotel as we did not want to spend the next 4 hours in a car... well, he says "no problem", he will take us to the City Palace in 10 Minutes. The drive began... onto the wrong side of the road, into oncoming traffic, into one-way roads, into oncoming traffic, squeezed passed other motorists, the driver got out of the car when everything was blocked and shouted at the other cars/scooters/pedestrians/horse carts AWAY!!! Imagine that cheek! It worked, he brought us to the Palace... and once more we thanked God for keeping us alive with this mad car driver. But they are all like that, every other group experienced the same.

Once we got to the City Palace, Dietmar organized a guide, an old gentleman who promised to keep our tour to a minimum of 1 hour. One can spend 8 hours easily, but that timeframe we did not have. One hour it was, and I think we had the best guide in the whole country... he explained briefly with humor and he chased us on when we could not take our eyes of what had gripped us. The same with the Gallery, also 1 hour, this time we had an Audio Guide. The City Palace is beautiful, the Crystal Galleries are wonderful and the structure and details are fascinating.






We went into the 'Old Town', one crew bought spices, the other whatever and we got an idea of what it looked and feels like in Mid Town, we all agreed on going back to "our palace" in time for sun set and rest.


As much as we like to see more, everything and engage in different activities, all of us are tired, (some of us have a slight to bad cold), and the next day we planned to stay in.


1 comment:

  1. Hallo Vero, hallo Dietmar,

    nun seid ihr in meiner 'zweiten Heimat' angekommen. Alles ganz normal, was ihr erlebt würde ich sagen.

    Eure letzten Tage waren sehr interessant zu lesen und ich beneide Euch ganz arg: Myanmar, Bhutan - da wären wir auch sehr gerne mit dabei gewesen!
    Nun aber viel Spaß in Indien!

    Liebe Grüße,
    Petra + Volker

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.