It was day 5 in India with 5 more days to go. I have to confess I was counting each one down- desperate to get out. Each day seemed a little bit harder to force myself out of the hotel, on to the streets, into a tuk tuk, to the airport or to a sight. Id already done 4 internal flights and one overnight train journey in the quest to see something of the country, desperate to find one thing that made me say upon my return home "I just loved India" but my weary body was just screaming "halt" and my brain was telling me just to give up.
Each place I went to had only brought temporary respite- perhaps a pool in the hotel, or a great reading corner, or a scented garden to walk amongst.......but the fact remained that sooner or later you needed to leave to go outside and face all the noise, the people, the rubbish, the beggers....... and those bloody cows.
And so it was flicking through the book 1000 places to see before you die I made a change in route and flew down to Udaipur to stay in a palace in the middle of a lake. Oh yes- definately no cows or beggers or tuk tuks or people or rubbish in the middle of Lake Pichola I thought.
A short plane flight later (after narrowly almost managing to my flight as the word "e-ticket" doesnt exist in India and you need to carry a printout of your ticket before you are even allowed entry into the airport terminal) I landed in Udaipur. From the moment I was greeted in the airport by a peaked hat chauffeur offering me an ice cold cloth and a bottle of water, I thought to myself that I might have found the place worth returning to.
And that was before we stepped outside and he settled me into a phantom rolls royce the palace had sent. We nimbly skirted the main drag of town and pulled in at a reception area on the banks of Lake Pichola. My luggage was removed, I was given a check in form, a glass of champagne and another cold cloth and informed that my boat was ready and waiting. Boat???
They werent joking. Replete with flags and standard, a boat was sitting on the shore ready to take me to the hotel which was, quite literally, in the middle of the lake with no access to the mainland. At this stage you can just see me hopping up and down in excitement. My grin was a mile long- about as long as the island was off the shore!
This might actually be worthy of being the top 1 in the 1000 places to see before you die.
Lake Palace, or Jag Niwas to be correct, was built in 1743 and was the Maharana of Udaipur's summer residence. Like most maharajas when Indira Gandhi decided in 1971 to remove their annual stipend, they were forced to find someway to pay for their extremely extravagent lifestyle. As a result, the palace is now leased out as a luxury hotel. Completely obliterating the 16,000 m2 rock on which it stands, the palace is a blancmange of some 80 odd marbled rooms, inacessible unless you are staying there or coming for dinner, with fountains, columns, courtyards, gardens and pool. Regularly voted as the most romantic hotel in India, this is a place where I could easily have stayed a month and never left.
As it was, despite them offering all sorts of trips during the day, I begged them never to send me off the island until the day of my flight.
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| Lake Palace |
I arrived at the island to be greeted a hostess who walked me along the marble jetty into the palace. From high above, giggling girls threw red rose petals over me which wafted down on the breeze, slowly settling at my feet, their gentle perfume released as I crushed them underfoot. An exquisitely dressed sari clad girl gave me the traditional Indian namaste giving, a red dot on my forehead, before I was taken to my suite.
Now, most fab places you are looking out into a non ending expanse of water. The beauty of the palace was it being on the water, looking back onto the land some distance away......oh, and being India,- the silence. Its amazing how you can overlook the necessity that the soul has for tranquility and solitude. I could feel my batteries recharging with every step that I took deeper into the cool confines of the palace.
The view from my window in Lake Palace was actually that of the City Palace. Now the City Palace actually looks rather impressive- a fusion of Rajasthani and Mughal architectural styles-but in fact it is built on top of a hill and they clad the hill in the same bricks used to build the palace so that it appears more formidable. It was in itself pretty and some photos are below......but incomparable to the beauty of the Lake Palace...both of which incidentally featured in James Bond's Octopussy movie.
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| city palace |
There is no need to do a blow by blow account of my 4 days in the palace. Maharini service throughout- from the workers who scuttled backwards into doors or around corners so you didnt see them when you walked by, to surprising the staff cleaning my room- all 4 of them with a 5th ticking things off a checklist, to the bag of spices and the recipe of a dish I had complimented the staff on which the chef brought to me at the end of a memorable dinner, to the maitre d' who on my second day had the sublime homemade yoghurt with pomegranate seeds already waiting for me at my breakfast table after I had eaten 3 the previous day, to the manager who upon hearing I needed to work installed a printer in my room while I was swimming laps in the pool, to the butler who at 7pm every night drew my water and prepared a swirling arrangement of marigold, rose petals and essential oils complete with candle light for me.
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| inner courtyard of lake palace |
But the highlight, if that was not enough, was having a few hours of pure pampering luxury. Literally the royal yacht had been converted into a mobile spa. Whisked away from the palace by boat, I was deposited at this beautiful teak sailing vessel, flags a fluttering, moored in the lake. Gently swaying on the calm blue waters I was invited to sip a health tonic and take a dip in the outdoor hot tub. Suitably relaxed I then entered the yacht where I was guided into a steam room to relax my muscles further. There is something quite surreal about being in a steam room on a boat- surrounded by water- in more ways than one. There was the gentle dripping sounds inside the boat which would normally have a skipper tearing up planks to find the leak while outside the water slapped against the sides of the barge.
Walking back into the main salon I then lay on a massage table and was treated to a heavenly one hour massage. A bit of hand and feet tidying up afterwards and a lie down on the top deck and a few hours later I reboarded the shuttle to return to the palace.
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| This is soooo the life! On the spa barge |
It was hard not to fall into this lifestyle and think it will never end and it is so far, my Number 1 spot in the 1000 places to see before you die. But, like the video giving a history of the Maharaji that played in my suite, it was, as the Maharini said "Jag Niwas was our summer home, rather than a palace. That was our life. And it is no more. And that's it. Nothing more to add really."
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| Night view |
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| The heavenly pool |
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| Ceremonial royal barge |
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