Udaipur, India

Is it possible for a toddler to scream throughout an entire 13 hour flight from Melbourne to New Delhi? Yes, from first-hand experience I can confirm that it is.

We're in India for a few weeks. I have finally managed to persuade Ken to visit this country, although (reluctantly) I have to give credit to 'James May in India' for the final nudge.

We're in northern India: we'll be visiting Udaipur, Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Kolkata, Varanasi and a number of small towns during a river cruise on the Ganges.

I'm writing this from Udaipur (pronounced oo-de-per) in the state of Rajasthan, in the north-west of India. Rajasthan is the largest state in India.

Udaipur is the City of Lakes, an oasis of water in the dry country. It's called the Venice of the East, for watery reasons. Five lakes and the Aravali mountain range surround the city, and the Thar Desert lies to the west. Udaipur's economy relies primarily on tourism, but there's also large-scale mining of zinc and silver. It has a population of 1.4 million, has boomed since 2000 and is the top wedding destination in India.

Okay, just think about that for a minute. The wedding business is huge. According to our guide Mr Kameel Kant Gupta ('call me KK'), there are 2 million marriages every year in India. Wedding spend is between US$50K to $100K per wedding. Average annual income is about $3000 but of course this is hugely variable. In northern India, families save 4% of their annual income for future family weddings; in southern India, it's 8%. Almost 20% of the world's gold is bought every year by Indian families as jewellery for a wedding dowry. (Although in rural India, the best dowry is a tractor.) October is wedding and festival month, so we've seen a few brides / pre-wedding / post-wedding shoots already. Almost the entire edition of the IndiGo Air in-flight magazine was dedicated to weddings — not a white dress in sight.

On the way to the city, we got our first sight of cows ambling around in the road — and chewing the cud on the median strips of the freeways. KK explained that cows are put out to pasture (so to speak) once they no longer give milk. The lucky ones are taken in by NGO-sponsored cowsheds; the others become street cows. Because cows are sacred to Hindus, they are fed by local people and it all seems to work fairly well.

There are plenty of street dogs as well, most looking pretty well fed and reasonably healthy. Apparently they're also fed by the community because all Hindus are obliged to do a good deed every morning; feeding dogs and cows qualifies as a good deed.

Phew, Indian history. Strap in. For centuries, the subcontinent was a bunch of princely states, each with their own culture, language, traditions and loyalties. This is known as the Rajput era. The region we're in now was known as Mewar and was ruled by the Mewar dynasty. In these northern areas, from the 1500s to the 1800s, the (Muslim) Mughal Empire was a dominant power and threat, but Mewar fended off the Mughals quite successfully, thanks to the mountains that the Mughal horsemen found difficult to navigate.

Here is some art (we saw a lot of this) depicting battle with the Mughals in fine detail. I find it fascinating.

To protect its own interests, Mewar became a British princely state in the 1800s. However, by mid-century many parts of India were a bit fed up with the whole British East India Company* situation (a trading company in effect ruled India), and in 1857 rose in rebellion. England calls this the Indian Mutiny; Indians call it the First War of Independence. Queen Victoria said 'Enough, vassals! I am not amused!' or something similar, and in 1858 India became part of the Britain Empire, aka the British Raj under the British Crown.

It took another 90 years for India to achieve independence in 1947.

Rajasthan is the only Indian state that still has a king, although his political power is negligible (other than granting vast swathes of family-owned land to various corporations, but that's another story). The current king and his family live in a section of the City Palace in Udaipur; another section is open to the public.

The City Palace lies next to Lake Pichola, and was built over a period of nearly 400 years with contributions from several rulers of the Mewar dynasty. Rajasthan kings are called maharanas, not maharajahs. This means 'warrior king' and reflects the role that war has played in the history of this region. Two of the kings were particularly famous for achievements during their reign: one in the 16th century, who fended off the Mughals, lost one eye and one arm, and survived 80 stab wounds; and the second who, post-independence in 1947, was instrumental in uniting the 562 princely states into one nation — India. He was a keen polo player, too, who fell off his horse and was paralysed. His wheelchair is memorialised with him.

This is the current king and his family (below — this portrait is in the palace). His son, the next-king-in-line, was leaving the palace as we entered, in a car with many many guards.

The City Palace has four floors, accessed through a labyrinth of narrow staircases and uneven marble steps. All purposely designed 500 years ago to confuse invaders and trap armed raiders! Assuming you can cope with the stairs and low ceilings, the biggest threat now to life and limb (not to mention sanity) are the young people taking selfies. Have you noticed that it doesn't take one or two attempts, but more like 20 to get that perfect angle of the nose against the light? Oh gawd, it doesn't matter which country we're in: we're plagued. This is where being an old lady is immeasurably helpful. I smile sweetly and ask if I could just take one or two pics, please, dear.

We worked our way up through lavishly decorated rooms that include Chinese tiles, European coloured glass and a queen's silver swing to arrive on the top floor, where trees grow and monkeys frolic.

As one climbs up, the views around the city and lake are marvellous.

A note about elephants and dead tigers. Images of elephants are everywhere. Not only do elephants represent Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu god of wisdom, intellect and good fortune, but the real critters were also used as war animals to display power and to crush opposition. The City Palace had elephant stables where elephants were kept, trained and displayed; no live elephants remain there now but there are models which show how the elephant jousts took place. The dead tigers? I kept seeing paintings of people on tiger shoots and standing triumphantly over dead tigers. It may be historical but it's also very sad.

The City Palace also includes the Crystal Gallery, the single largest private collection of crystal anywhere in the world. No photos were allowed in the upper gallery of the glittering Durbar Hall Sabhagaar, so you'll have to take my word for it: I have never seen so many crystal wine glasses / shot glasses / whisky tumblers in one place. There are also crystal-adorned beds, chairs, dining tables, vases. Can you imagine keeping all that clean?

The City Palace is the royal family's winter palace. The white palace in the centre of the lake was the summer palace. Built of white marble in the 1740s on an island of 4 acres, it looks like it's floating. The royal family used it as a summer retreat, where they could have privacy for their (apparently) decadent summer moonlit picnics. You might recognise the palace from some movies, like Octopussy.

It's now a hotel called the Taj Lake Palace, and that's where we're staying. It's accessible only by private boat, from a private jetty.

Our welcome to the hotel not only included flower garlands and fragrant tea, but a rose petal shower from above the entrance. We considered ourselves welcomed. Do we have a water view? We've never been closer. These are all taken from either our room or the front entrance. I love the view of the City Palace from the hotel.

Every morning the flute man plays his flute. Spot him under the cupola on the first floor.

The young chef was concerned that I was only eating yoghurt and fruit for breakfast (my standard breakfast, no matter where I am) and insisted that she made me some of her masala dosa.

One evening, we were treated to a display of traditional dancing. The young women were graceful and elegant, even with a fiery urn on their head; the man with the wheel on his head was a bit nervewracking.

We embark on a boat tour of the lake. We go past a number of hotels, including the extremely fancy Oberoi and Leela hotels, known for celebrity weddings, but I'm more interested in the traditional ghats (also spelled ghaats). Ghats are areas on a lake or river bank with steps into the water, where people can carry out religious rituals. The first two photos below show one ghat on the lake. Today is both a national holiday commemorating the birth of Mahatma Gandhi (always on 2 October) and a Hindu festival (a changeable date) called Dusserha, which commemorates the triumph of Lord Rama over the demon king Ravana, symbolising the victory of good over evil. Diwali is coming up later in the month and all these festivities precede the big holiday, so many people are out and about celebrating these events.

There's a second island on Lake Pichola, and yes, it also has a royal family palace. This is the Festivities or Garden Palace, called Jag Mandir. It was started in the mid-1500s and completed about 100 years later. Now, like the Taj Palace Hotel, it is leased by the king to a hotel group, who uses it primarily for (surprise!) high-end weddings.

KK is standing next to a structure made of green marble. This palace has white, red and green marble. The ground squirrels seem pretty oblivious to all of us.

This is how it looks lit up at night from a boat on the lake.

Back on the mainland, we head to the Jagdish Temple, a 300+ year-old monument to Rajput kings and functioning Hindu temple. We climb into a tuk-tuk and zoom up the hill. This temple is dedicated to Lord Vishnu, the god of preservation and protection. (Jagadish or Jagganath are other names for Vishnu. I'll get to Hindu gods in another post.) We're permitted to take photos outside but not inside the temple, where people are worshipping. (I note with great pleasure the sign 'No selfies permitted'.) I took a video on the way back down the hill; look out for the street dogs.

We head to Saheliyon-ki-Bari, Udaipur’s Garden of Maidens. Now a public garden, this was built in the 1700s by a king as a gift to his queen and her 48 handmaidens. What this meant was that he could frolic in private with her (and the 48?) amongst the (gravity-driven) fountains, lotus pools and marble elephants.

I love the idiosyncratic English in this sign above. It's the most idiosyncratic I've seen so far. I also enjoy the Indian English spoken by KK: how the swing in the City Palace was oscillated by servants, how the king was coronated, how satellite phones are confistated, and how drivers look out for flocks of cows. On Dusserha, a large effigy is burned in every town to symbolise the burning of evil; according to KK, all around the bonfire the people are hanging. Note that I'm not critical — I'm interested in how our shared language adapts in different places.

What about shopping? I'm not a shopper but we were introduced to pashminas from Kashmir and to a local art collector. We might have indulged a tiny bit.

One night we went out to dinner at a fashionable local restaurant called Poppy by Royal Repast. The food was great but the best aspect was the boat ride back to the hotel in the dark.

An old friend in Cape Town recommended we include Udaipur in our Indian itinerary (thanks, A) and I'm glad we did. But this post is getting a bit long, and we're about to fly back to New Delhi, so I will publish this now and get back to food and gods and lots more in upcoming posts. If you're still with me, thank you.

Next: New Delhi

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*The (British) East India Company* (BEIC) arrived in India in the 1600s, bringing with it greed, skulduggery, religious division, famine and brutality. I'm not saying those things weren't there before, but this was laissez-faire exploitation on steroids. It wasn't military conquest that Britain used to colonise India: it was trade. (Anyway, the BEIC didn't need the British state. It had its own army. At its height, the company was the largest corporation in the world and had its own armed forces, twice the size of the British Army.) Trade brought taxes, corruption and dodgy local government, and over time, colonial policies and legislation. For an easy-to-listen-to, 60 minute overview of the history of the British East Indian Company, this is quite a good podcast.