Travelogue - A trip to the royal land of the Ranas - Part 3

You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

We woke up to the beautiful view of the sun shining over the shimmering waters of the Pichola lake dancing merrily right outside our window. It felt heavenly to sit and watch the lake and the palaces across in the early morning light. After a short period of time spent thus, we headed to the yoga session that is held everyday morning at the hotel. Post an hour of relaxing yoga, we went down to get ready for the day and hit the restaurant area for breakfast. We chose our favorite alcove like spot in the dining area for that morning. 

Sitting here and dining transported us to a different world ..

As soon as we settled in, a cute little cake arrived commemorating my birthday, taking me by surprise. Sitting inside a palace situated in the middle of a beautiful lake with a birthday cake in front of me on my D-day, I felt immensely special :) The husband had really hit it off for my first birthday post marriage!

After a nice cake cutting ceremony and photo session, we settled down to have a sumptuous breakfast. Post that it was time to pack and say goodbye to this dreamlike place. We were winding up our packing in the room and lo! Another cake arrived, this time an ethnic one with an elephant printed on it and decorated with ladoos.

The ethnic birthday cake :)

After enjoying this second celebration, we arrived at the reception with bag and baggage. The hotel staff gave me a lovely gift of Agarbhathis that represented aromas from different parts of India and a framed photograph of the cake cutting. They thus made our trip a truly memorable one.

As we stepped into the boat that was to take us to the shore, we felt like we had traveled back in time to live in a past era of kings and queens for a day. We then sailed away from the palace to the mainland and to the present, bidding a fond adieu to the Lake Palace.  

Back in mainland, we had a full day of sightseeing in front of us. We started off with a museum that had vintage cars of the royal family on display and then headed to the city palace. It was extremely huge with winding corridors, claustrophobic stairways and really small rooms. And we were given a dose of the blood stained history of the royal lineage through paintings and accompanying stories all through. It hit us that being a king is not all glamour and royal living after all. With life and kingdom under constant threat from even near and dear ones, how much of the pageantry would they have enjoyed? 

With these thoughts zooming in our minds, we next headed to Sajjan Garh, a palace built on one of the peaks of the Aravalli range. The building of this palace was started off by one of the kings who died early in his youth and hence never got to see it to completion or live there. It was completed by his successors and was used as an astronomical center to watch monsoon clouds and as a resort for the royal family. The palace has the most stunning panoramic views of the huge mountains around, the lakes and the city below. The sight outside every single window just took our breath away!

The Sajjan Garh perched atop the Bansdara peak

Each window framed such stunning views

A panaroma of the city as seen from Sajjan Garh

From there we headed to the Nehru park located in the middle of the Fateh Sagar lake. Before taking a ferry to the park, I filled my hungry stomach with yummy ragda patties from a road side chat shop. No trip to any place is complete without tasting the street food after all!

At the park we walked around enjoying the greenery within and the surrounding expanse of water. 

Nehru Park  

After this long yet relaxing and enjoyable day of site seeing, we checked into a quaint little hotel called Jaiwana Haveli for our last night at Udaipur. I would recommend this very professionally run hotel if you ever go to Udaipur. It is a bathe and breakfast kind of place but very neatly maintained and  managed by two brothers who are extremely helpful with all the information and directions you may want about the city. The food is good and the highlight is the mind blowing views their open air restaurant has of the lake and the lake palace. The husband and I spent 6AM to 8:30 AM at the restaurant next day morning and still couldn't have enough of all the beauty we saw around us. I have never seen such a beautiful shade of blue painted all over. I will give a rest to words here and let the pictures speak. 

This was the most beautiful view in the entire trip!!

Soothing blue wherever the eyes turn

To experience the flavors of the real Udaipur, we visited a nearby temple which had festivities going on well past midnight! Old women were singing and dancing away to glory and it was a nice sight to watch :) It was also really spooky to walk back through the dark lanes to reach the hotel at midnight. But fun nevertheless :)

Next day, we walked the bazars, traveled by local transport and I had my fill of shopping. I bought the famous bandhini and some pretty accessories.

We then bid goodbye to this historic and royal city. After an enjoyable bus ride that took us to Ahmadabad, we flew back to Bangalore and hit the bed at around 2 AM. I was in office next morning by 10 AM with red eyes and a huge smile speaking for itself about the wonderful trip that this one was :) One of my most memorable birthdays indeed!