Sunday, April 03, 2005

The magical lake that wasn't.

The guidebooks are in agreeance: Udaipur is the most charming and enchanting city in this heavily visited region of the country. But part of that charm is currently missing. Lake Pichola has almost dried up after several years of poor monsoon rains, and the Floating Palace looks more like wedding cake embattled in a contiuous dust storm. However, with a little imagination you can pretend the lake's there, or simply wait for the sun to go down; no-one's any the wiser.
Furthermore the guidebooks will inform you that the opening scences of Octopussy, the fabulously trashy James Bond movie circa 1978, was filmed in this fair town. How's that for kudos?

The real charm of this locale, and the reason people come to visit, is that the area breathes a kind of magic. It's the India you read about as a kid - mythical and seething with intricately decorated palaces, magnificent harems and elaborate havelis. And I delude myself for a while more, close my eyes, and pretend to the emperor, bejewelled and adored by the masses, riding my elephant across the mountains ...

... You can pretend to be the Maharaja leading a force of fearless Rajput warriors out to face the Mughal infidels, riding to a certain death but maintaining your honour. All the while knowing your wife (or wives) will commit self-immolation as the enemy knocks at the gates, throwing herself (or themselves) onto the burning pyre rather than face dishonour and pillage and all that comes with warfare in the late 15th century.

And when you wake up, you can just sit on the roof top of the guesthouse, drink sickeningly sweet tea, and chill.

I did a bit of both.

The place is chokka with palaces. Behind our little family-run hotel sits the foreboding City Palace, a construction undertaken initally by Udai Singh when he was ousted for the last time from Chittorgarh. Successive Rajput maharajas have added to the glamour of the palace, and a walk though it provides insight into the huge amounts of cash, power and labour that these guys had access to. The armoury: a collection of the meanest, deadliest killing utensils ever seen; sword, scimitars, daggers and guns a go-go, though there was one piece that looked suspiciously like an large egg whisk.

We also visited a Bakar-li-Haveli ... it must've been good to be the king. Have to say though, I wouldn't have liked to be a woman in India prior to the Raj. The idea of being stuck in the same building for most of my married life wasn't probably that much fun. Even if the building in question has 138 rooms on two levels set around a leafy courtyard.

Th rest of the town is that typical Indian labyrinth of narrow alleys filled with motorcyles, woman in saris, groups of immature and sexually repressed teenage men taunting you because there's safety in numbers, underfed and never-fed dogs, the ever-sacred cows, and excrement belonging to all of the above. But it is calmer that the India you see on Discovery channel, and certainly more serene that Bombay - we spent loads of time on the roof top balcony of the hotel, philosophising about total crap and for Leah and Nick, a chance to settle into their new world for the next few weeks.

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