Udaipur

Elephants symbolize "good luck."

Yesterday (Monday, April 7) we flew an hour south from Delhi to Udaipur. Udaipur is on the southern border of Rajasthan State (green color), about halfway from Delhi to the coastal province of Gujarat. While it is hard to read the smaller print, Udaipur is below the word Rajasthan. Jaipur (our next stop on Tuesday and Wednesday) is above Rajasthan. Agra is below Delhi and is where the Taj Mahal is located.

It is nestled in a geologically active area of mountains, intense folding and faulting, and mining operations for zinc and silver. The town is surrounded by hills and mountains and it is situated on a string of impounded and dammed lakes.

There are many palaces dotting the shoreline of the main lake. Our hotel, the Oberoi Udaipur, is pictured above. At the top of the hill behind the hotel is one of the palaces we visited later in the day.

When our driver learned that we were only going to be in Udaipur for less than a day, he suggested that he drop us off at a dock where a launch would take us across the lake to the hotel. He drove around and left our bags at the hotel. We approached the hotel by landing at the dock in the foreground on the right side of the photo.

Here's the courtyard of the hotel. All is well-manicured!

We were greeted with rose petals showering us. And we now had special hats, lamanshes.

Nari's a natural. Chris is a bit odd-looking.

Oh, well.

And our room had the "welcome mat" rolled out.

The Monsoon Palace was the first on our list since it closed soon. As you could see from the lake photo, this is perched on the top of a steep-sided ridge and is surrounded by hills and mountains.

The Palace is surrounded by wildlife. Monkeys greeted us as we climbed the steps to the Palace.

Below is a leopard with its kill. This is in a museum in the Palace. Leopards roam the region and are known to be extremely dangerous to wildlife and humans.

You can see how mountainous the area is as the camera aims to the south.

To the east, you can see the lake where we arrived a few hours before.

We will end here and continue our exploration of Udaipur by going to the City Palace.

Cheers,

Brio