Udaipur

Udaipur is the most romantic of Rajasthan’s cities, and the one least like the rest of it. Where Jaipur and Jodhpur are cities of desert and stone, Udaipur is a city of water: a chain of man-made lakes laid into a fold of the Aravalli hills by the Mewar dynasty, with white marble palaces set upon and around them so that, at the right hour, the whole city seems to float. It was founded in 1559 as the new seat of a royal house that prided itself on never having bowed to Mughal rule, and that continuity, of family, of craft, of ceremony, is still palpable. The Maharana’s descendants run hotels here; the miniature painters work in the same lanes their ancestors did; the City Palace remains a living complex rather than a ruin.

The city is best experienced slowly and from the water. The two definitive addresses both sit on or in Lake Pichola, the Taj Lake Palace afloat on its own island and reached only by launch, and The Oberoi Udaivilas spread across the western shore behind reflecting pools, each delivering an arrival by boat that is half the pleasure. Those who prefer a frontal view of the floodlit City Palace take The Leela on the eastern bank; those who want birdsong and seclusion over the lakefront tableau take Raffles on its private island in Udai Sagar, or climb into the Aravallis to the restored 18th-century palace of RAAS Devigarh. The rhythm of a good stay is unhurried: mornings for the City Palace and the markets before the heat and the crowds, afternoons for the spa or the pool, and the long golden hour reserved, always, for the lake.

Dinner is a matter of choosing your view. The palace hotels do the polished, candlelit version, Sheesh Mahal at The Leela, Neel Kamal within the Lake Palace, Sawai Kitchen’s revived royal recipes at Raffles, while the city’s own institutions, Ambrai at the water’s edge and the rooftops of 1559 AD, offer the same panorama with more atmosphere and less formality. Between meals there is the curator’s walk through the palace, the miniature-painter’s atelier, the nightly folk dance at Bagore Ki Haveli, and, for those with more time, the day’s drive into the hills to Kumbhalgarh’s great wall and the carved marble of Ranakpur.

Three nights is the sensible minimum; four is the ideal, allowing one unhurried lake day and one excursion into the Aravallis without the visit becoming a checklist. The season is October to March, with the deep winter weeks the most reliable. Come in the monsoon and the hills turn green and the lakes brim and the city empties, a quieter, more reflective Udaipur for travellers who already know it. It is a place that rewards stillness over itinerary, and discretion over volume, which is precisely what makes it one of the great romantic destinations of the subcontinent.