Day 588 - Checking out the City Palace

Even though we've seen plenty of palaces and museums in Rajasthan, today we saw yet another but this time the Palace happened to be the largest in all of Rajasthan (we tend to be skeptical of claims of the "biggest", "oldest", "higest" etc, as often after research the claims tend to be false!!). Unfortunately those of you who only look at the blog for the photos will be disappointed as the camera fee was to high for us to afford! The museum was mainly full of paintings depicting royal and war scenes (and more than enough hunting paintings) - the trend of Indian paintings over the last five centuries is to produce paintings jammed packed with detail painted by tiny strokes that leave your eyes squinting as they attempt to absorb.
Just as interesting as the paintings was the palace architecture itself - we'd be wandering through dark narrow hallways and then pop out in colourful open rooms complete with stained glass windows and carved marble balconies that gave us spectacular views of the city. The show stopper was the courtyard with a flock of peacocks - and though it's common to see peacocks all over India, these were mosaic masterpieces of coloured tile!
After lunch we checked out a Krishna temple that's over 500 years old, its carvings extremely eye catching but a little easier to absorb than the tiny detail of the Jain temples of Mt Abu.
We also managed to squeeze in a walk along the edge of Lake Pichola - worth it for the views of the palace and misty hills behind, but don't get any ideas of romantic strolls along the waterfront - not really a possibility in India, unless of course you find sitting on the edge of a septic tank romantic!

The evening was filled with the usuals of wandering the streets looking for dinner - in a tourist town like Udaipur this means walking up numerous flights of stairs to the rooftop restaurants and checking out different menus. At least we get a workout before feeding the bellies.

Adlibing Udaipur's Palace.