20 Best Things to do in Udaipur, Rajasthan

PrologueGetting There and the Rooftop Where I Slept

Khamma Ghani, said the boatman, and the fortnight began

I reached Udaipur in the last cool week of Chaitra, when the Aravallis still held a little green and the lakes sat full and unhurried. The flight touched down at Dabok airport in the afternoon, and the taxi took forty minutes to cover the twenty two kilometres into the old city past roadside stalls selling marigold strings and paper flags.

My friend met me at Lal Ghat with a thermos of cutting chai and one rule for the fortnight, which was to eat first and see second. Before I had put my bag down we had finished a plate of hot pyaaz kachori from a cart that had no name board.

I slept in a rooftop room of a haveli guesthouse near Gangaur Ghat that my friend's aunt had arranged, with a ceiling fan, a cot and a view of two lakes if I stood on the water tank. The first sound of every morning was the Jagdish temple bell, and the second was a neighbour beating a carpet against a parapet.

This diary follows the six days we spent around the Mewar Festival, plus a return drive in July when the monsoon had turned the hills green. I have put the lesser known stories first and the famous sights after, because the old city made more sense to me once I knew what its own people said about it.

Each section carries a small line telling you which day and hour it happened, so you can follow how the days moved from dawn aarti to late night chai. The costs, the booking notes and the practical numbers sit in boxes at the end, where they will not interrupt the walking.

OriginsThe Hermit, the Banjara and the Chain of Lakes

Before any palace stood here, there was water and a piece of advice

My friend told the founding story on our first walk up from Lal Ghat, pointing at the ridge above the City Palace. Maharana Udai Singh II was hunting near Lake Pichola when a hermit meditating on the hill told him to build his home there, with the hills behind him as a wall.

Chittorgarh, the old capital, fell to Akbar's siege in 1567, and the family never went back to live there. The new city became the seat of Mewar, and over the next centuries it became the place where the dynasty rebuilt its court and its treasury.

Lake Pichola was dug by hand in 1362, according to local memory, by a banjara grain trader who needed water for his oxen. Udai Singh later enlarged it, and it now sits at the head of a chain of lakes joined by narrow masonry channels.

When the rains fill one lake, the water walks into the next. My friend's grandfather called the whole arrangement the sponge, and I never heard it described better.

When monsoon water rises in one lake it spills through the channels into the next, and the old engineers used the system as flood control and as a way to bank water for dry years. That chain explains why Udaipur is called the city of lakes and why the water level is a topic at every tea stall in July.

Pichola, Fateh Sagar, Swaroop Sagar, Doodh Talai and Badi are the lakes I saw in the course of the week. By the sixth day I could point to each of them from a rooftop and say which one fed which.

The FestivalFollow the Gangaur Procession to Gangaur Ghat During the Mewar Festival

Barley shoots, a moustached god and a boat of lamps

Mewar Festival is the public name for Gangaur, the spring festival of Gauri and Isar that begins the day after Holi and builds toward a final procession in Chaitra. In Udaipur the closing days send painted images through the old streets to Gangaur Ghat, and a decorated boat carries the royal Gangaur image across Lake Pichola while fireworks open above the City Palace.

Weeks before the procession, girls sow barley in small pots of ash taken from the Holi fire and water them every morning until the shoots turn pale yellow green. Those tender shoots become the offering to Gauri, and a girl whose pot rises thick and even is told her year will be a good one.

Look for the figure with the painted moustache. That is Isar, and the lady beside him is Gauri, and the women carrying them on their heads have been practising the balance since they were girls.

The two images are Gauri, a form of Parvati, and Isar, a form of Shiva, and the women walk with them on their heads toward the ghat in bandhani and leheriya of every colour. Unmarried girls fast and pray for a husband like Shiva, while married women fast for the long life of theirs.

On the first evening we took a place on the steps of Gangaur Ghat at four in the afternoon, because my friend said the good places go before the first drum. By five the procession had started near the Lal Ghat side and was winding along the lake wall, with men clearing a path by shouting politely.

An aunt from the next stair pressed a mehndi cone into my hand and drew a small peacock on my palm, which stayed brown until the last day. She laughed when I tried to thank her and said the peacock was for luck on the road.

As dusk came the royal Gangaur boat moved out with lamps along its rail, the images were taken across the water, and fireworks lit the City Palace walls from behind. The women sang in Mewari, one long phrase repeated, and the crowd on the steps took up the refrain without being asked.

The second day of the festival brought a cultural programme of folk dance and music, and a contest for the best Rajasthani attire among visiting couples, which my friend refused to let me enter. There was also a fair of swings and sweet stalls in the old city, and ghewar stacked like honeycomb discs at every corner.

My friend said ghewar is offered to Gauri in Mewar during these days, along with gunjiya, and that an aunt who made the best gunjiya in the lane would guard her recipe until the last day of Chaitra. We ate both standing in the street with our fingers, and I lost count.

Gangaur changes its character from one Rajasthani city to the next. Jaipur sends a royal procession out from the old city palace gate, while Jodhpur ends the season with Dhinga Gavar, a night when costumed women walk the streets with canes and the young men who step into their path accept the blows as a blessing.

The tribal belt around Udaipur keeps a different festival altogether, the Bhil Gavri, a dance drama performed through the later part of the monsoon for around forty days by troupes who travel from village to village. I did not see it that spring, but I met a villager near Alsigarh in July who spoke of it the way others speak of a wedding in the family.

No. 01Tour the Mewar Dynasty Galleries and Crystal Gallery at City Palace Complex

Where a dynasty left its fingerprints on marble

We walked up from Jagdish Chowk at half past nine, bought the museum tickets at the counter near the Ganesh Deori gate and queued behind a school group from Ahmedabad. Girls in new bandhani were posing on the steps with small pots of barley shoots, and the guard let them stay for the photographs because it was Gangaur week.

We entered by the Tripolia gate, and the first thing my friend pointed at was a set of carved arches, where Maharanas of Mewar were once weighed against gold and silver and the metal given away as charity. The ritual, called tula daan, is remembered in the old city with more warmth than most battles.

The Mewar dynasty galleries hold armour, swords, portraits and royal belongings of a line that rebuilt itself here in the 1550s, when Maharana Udai Singh II chose this ridge above the lake. I stood a long time at the case of weapons from the Haldighati years, where the labels use the name of Maharana Pratap with a respect I had heard only in the old city.

The palace was built over some four centuries by a long line of Maharanas, each adding his own wing, so the floors never quite match and the stairs change height without warning. My friend pushed me into a stair so narrow I had to turn my shoulders, and said it was drawn that way on purpose.

Guides say invaders who broke through the outer courts would have had to climb in single file, unable to swing a sword or draw a bow while archers watched through small slits overhead. I could not confirm it from any plaque, but standing in that stair with a stranger's elbow in my ribs I believed it.

The Crystal Gallery is the room I came back to twice, a collection of glass chairs, a crystal bed, tables and fountains ordered from England in the 1870s by Maharana Sajjan Singh. He died only a few years after the order arrived, and the collection stayed shut away long after, which is why it still feels like a secret.

I bought the separate Crystal Gallery ticket and stood in front of a crystal chair with a velvet rope between us, trying to picture a Maharana lowering himself into glass. A guard who had stood there for years told me, without being asked, that nobody has ever been allowed to sit on it.

Walk on to Mor Chowk, where peacocks are formed from thousands of tiny pieces of coloured glass, and stand a moment while the afternoon light slants across them. Go early since tour groups fill the narrow stairs by eleven, and carry a light scarf for the cool stone corridors.

Lunch was a thali in a lane behind the palace, with dal baati churma and ghee poured until the churma stopped being a sweet and became a pudding. We sat on a low bench, argued about whether the crystal bed was beautiful or absurd, and agreed it was both.

No. 02Take a Sunset Boat Cruise to Jag Mandir on Lake Pichola

A brass hour on Pichola

We took the late boat from the City Palace jetty, when the lake turns the colour of old copper and the palace walls seem to lift off the water. The boatman had a plastic bag of leftover marigold petals from the procession, and he scattered them on the water before starting the engine, saying the lake had earned them.

The ride stops at Jag Mandir, an island palace begun in the sixteenth century and completed in the reign of Maharana Jagat Singh I, who gave it his name. Two carved stone elephants stand at the landing, and I climbed the steps behind a family who were arguing cheerfully about whose turn it was to hold the baby.

In 1623 a young prince named Khurram, later Emperor Shah Jahan, took refuge here after quarrelling with his father Jahangir, and the Gul Mahal where he stayed is said to have inspired a dome he built later in Agra. Guides repeat the story with pride, though historians treat the link as a possibility and not a proven fact.

The lake began as a small bund raised by a banjara grain trader, according to local memory, long before any Maharana called it his own.

Another island tale concerns 1857, when the Maharana is remembered to have sheltered British families on Jag Mandir during the uprising. From the water we could see the white island across the lake, Jag Niwas, built in the 1740s as a summer palace and now run as the Lake Palace hotel, where entry is generally limited to guests and dining reservations.

The Lake Palace also appeared in a 1983 James Bond film, a fact that three separate boatmen offered me before I had asked anything. My friend rolled her eyes and said the real story of the lake was beneath us, in the channels.

We drifted for the last twenty minutes with the engine off while the sun went behind the hills and the palace lights came on window by window. A group of women on the boat beside ours began to sing a Gangaur song, and our boatman hummed the second line without turning his head.

Back at Lal Ghat we ate hot mirchi vada from a handcart, burning our tongues, and my friend bought us each a clay cup of chai. I climbed the rooftop stairs at ten and fell asleep to the sound of drums rehearsing for the next evening.

No. 03Watch the Dharohar Evening Folk Dance Show at Bagore Ki Haveli

Brass lamps, hollow drums and one very patient puppet

Bagore Ki Haveli was raised in the eighteenth century by Amar Chand Badwa, the Prime Minister of Mewar, and its many rooms open onto courtyards that smell faintly of lamp oil. It stands beside Gangaur Ghat, so we reached it on foot from the guesthouse in six minutes, pushing through the festival crowd with our tickets held above our heads.

The Dharohar show begins at seven, and we arrived at a quarter past six, because my friend had warned me that the haveli fills before the doors are even open. We sat on the floor, and she steered me away from the very front row toward the first raised step along the courtyard wall, where my neck stayed straight and the drums came back off the arches in the same moment as the sound.

The programme moves from Ghoomar, the swirling dance of Rajasthani women, to Terah Taali, in which a seated woman strikes thirteen cymbals tied to her body while a pot of lamps rests on her head. The Bhavai artist who balances a stack of brass pots and dances on the rim of a plate drew the loudest hush of the night.

Kathputli puppets closed the evening, and the puppeteer's jokes in the Mewari dialect were something even my friend struggled to translate. The squeaking voices of the puppets come from a small reed whistle held under the tongue while the hands work many strings at once, and I watched the man's cheeks until I saw it.

That night the ghat outside was full of Gangaur crowds, so the drums from the street leaked into the courtyard during the quiet parts of the show. Nobody seemed to mind, and a girl in the row ahead of me tapped her barley pot against her knee to the beat.

Before leaving the museum I wandered through rooms of mirror work, painted walls and old royal clothes, and found them far quieter than anything at the City Palace. After the show we ate roasted corn on the ghat steps and watched the last boats cross, and I walked home slowly with my ears still ringing from the drums.

No. 04Admire Intricate Stone Carvings and Attend Morning Aarti at Jagdish Temple

Thirty two steps toward a bell

Jagdish Temple is a 1651 shrine raised by Maharana Jagat Singh I for Vishnu as Jagannath, reached by a steep flight of thirty two steps guarded by carved stone elephants. I walked there from my rooftop in four minutes in the dark, past a man sweeping the lane and a tea cart just lighting its stove.

We climbed at a quarter to six, when the only crowd was a line of women with brass thalis and small pots of barley shoots for the Gangaur week. An unofficial guide offered at the foot of the stairs to take us inside for a fee, and my friend said no without breaking her stride.

Inside, a black stone idol faces the brass shrine of Garuda, the bird vehicle of Vishnu, who sits outside the sanctum looking toward the god with the patience of a very old guard. If you stand in the hall at the right angle, Garuda's hollow chest frames the deity's face with no devotee in the way, a line of sight I only noticed because a priest nudged me two steps to the left.

The outer walls climb in bands of dancers, elephants and musicians, and a small torch reads them better than sunlight does. My friend said the carvings rise from war elephants at the base through cavalry and musicians, and that some panels show couples, a reminder that worldly desires were meant to be met before the sanctum.

Morning aarti began with bells and conch shells and a rhythm the priests kept without looking, and I stood at the back while the smell of camphor drifted over the stairs. The sweet prasad that followed was a spoonful of sugared crumbs, and I held it cupped in my palm for longer than I needed to.

The lowest step has a dark circular dip worn smooth by feet, and old women in the lane told me they rub a baby's feet on it to ward off coughs and chills. I saw one grandmother do it with a child no bigger than a loaf of bread while the mother looked away, embarrassed and pleased.

Leave your shoes at the foot of the steps, and remember that the steep stone can be slippery after the lane has been washed. We finished the morning with kulhad chai at the tea cart and a plate of poha, and my friend declared the day well begun.

No. 05Stroll Along the Marbled Promenades and Gravity Fountains at Saheliyon Ki Bari

Forty eight friends and a garden that remembers rain

Saheliyon Ki Bari, the Garden of the Maidens, was laid out in the early eighteenth century by Maharana Sangram Singh II for the forty eight young women who came to Udaipur with a princess as her companions. We went by auto from the old city and the ride took about fifteen minutes, with the driver talking the whole way about the cricket score.

The fountains work on gravity fed water pressure carried through old channels from the higher level of Fateh Sagar, so the sound you hear is softer than any pump and closer to what the maidens heard. A guard told me the stone birds and jets around the lotus pool were shaped to sound like rain on leaves, and I stood among them with my eyes shut and could not say he was wrong.

The square pavilion ringed by stone elephants is called the Sawan Bhadon pavilion, and it was built to imitate the two wettest months of the Hindu year. Water sheets down on all four sides from nozzles along the roof edge, and I sat inside it with a dry shirt and the whole sound of a downpour around me.

Walk the marble paths slowly, because the best fountains play near the lotus pool and the black stone elephants, and the small pavilions give pockets of shade. Groups of women in festival colours sat near the pool eating from steel tiffins, and one of them offered us a piece of sweet gunjiya without any introduction.

My friend insisted we stay until the end of the day when neighbourhood families gather and the garden becomes a place for conversation and not for photographs. A man selling cold drinks explained the garden's rules to me three times, none of which matched.

In the monsoon the lawns turn emerald and the fountains play against low clouds, which is when the garden makes the most sense. A short walk away lies Fateh Sagar, so the two pair well in one slow afternoon, which is how we spent ours.

No. 06Catch 360 Degree Sunset Views Over the Aravallis at Sajjangarh (Monsoon Palace)

A palace built to watch the weather

Maharana Sajjan Singh began Sajjangarh in 1884 as a palace for watching the monsoon clouds roll across the Aravallis, and he died before it was finished. The white building sits on Bansdara Hill at about three thousand feet and now looks over a wildlife sanctuary where sambar and nilgai wander the slopes.

We took a taxi from the old city at four, paid at the sanctuary gate and climbed the narrow road in second gear with a family on a motorcycle ahead of us, a Gauri image wrapped in cloth on the pillion seat, going home after the festival. The palace was built with no natural spring nearby, so the architects hollowed a cistern below the central courtyard and channelled rain into it from every roof, a system that my friend called the smartest thing in the building.

Go in the last two hours before sunset, when the sky turns the colour of rose water over the plains and the lakes below look like pieces of broken mirror. On a clear day the city shrinks to a toy, and the lakes line up in the order of their making.

While tourists crowded the western parapet, we walked to the southwestern corner of the lower terrace where old stone gun platforms are pointed out. Locals say salutes were fired from there toward the incoming monsoon clouds as a signal to farmers on the Mewar plains, a story that made the whole building feel less like a palace and more like a weather station.

The road up is narrow and the closing time is firm, so leave before the guards begin to whistle and do not plan to descend in the dark. We waited for the last orange line to leave the plain, then rode down in the taxi with the windows open and a smell of dry grass coming in.

Winter suits the climb, while the monsoon brings mist that hides the plain and makes the building seem to float. Dinner that night was laal maas at a family restaurant my friend trusted, with bajre ki roti, and I slept the way people sleep after a day of hills.

No. 07Sit for Dusk Skyline Photography and Reflection Views at Ambrai Ghat

The skyline writes itself in water

Ambrai Ghat sits on the western shore of Pichola, across the water from the palaces, which means the City Palace, Jag Mandir and the Lake Palace line up in one frame at dusk. We walked there from the old city across the bridge near Chand Pole in about fifteen minutes, then sat on the stone steps and ordered tea from the lane behind.

Photographers should arrive about forty minutes before sunset to claim a step and set up a tripod. The best window opens in the first fifteen minutes after the sun is gone, when the palace spotlights come on but the sky still holds a deep cobalt glow and the water gives you a double reflection before darkness takes the contrast.

When the boats stop and the wind drops, the palace repeats itself in the lake with barely a ripple, and I took more frames in those fifteen minutes than in the whole day before. Behind us the festival drums carried across the water from Gangaur Ghat, and the sound arrived a second after the fireworks lit up.

I came back on the fourth morning at six, and the place was another country. Washermen were rinsing printed cloth in the stone troughs, grey herons stood on the submerged ramps opposite the Lake Palace, and nobody had turned on a single spotlight.

Evenings here are mellow, and the rooftop cafes along the lanes behind the ghat start folk music around eight and wind down by eleven. I ate a plate of kachori at a corner stall and walked home with a clear head and an almost empty memory card.

No. 08Ride the Mansapurna Ropeway for Aerial Lake Views at Karni Mata Temple

Lifted over a sleeping city

The ropeway climbs from Deen Dayal Upadhyay Park near Doodh Talai up Machla Magra, the Fish Hill, in a few unhurried minutes. The Karni Mata shrine at the top has no connection to the famous rat temple of Bikaner, and Mansapurna means the shrine that fulfils wishes.

We reached the park before four, and the Doodh Talai musical fountain at the foot of the hill was already warming up for the evening. The queue at the ticket counter ran past forty minutes on a Saturday, so we sat on a bench with sugarcane juice and waited our turn.

From the viewing terrace Pichola spreads out like a polished coin, with the City Palace on its edge and Fateh Sagar glinting beyond the town. Late afternoon gives the softest light, and the ropeway carries you back down when your legs have had enough.

Most people face west to watch the sun set behind the hills, but my friend turned me around to face the old city. As the sun sank behind us, the whitewashed havelis, the Jagdish spire and the City Palace front lit up in gold like a stage set, and I understood why she had insisted on this hour.

At the shrine, devotees offered coconuts and sweets, and a woman beside me tied a thread to the railing and whispered a request. Locals mention an old stone stair behind the lower terminal that reaches the top in about fifteen minutes past the remains of a bastion, but I did not try it and would ask at the counter before anyone does.

No. 09Walk or Cycle Along Rani Road and Eat Street Food at Fateh Sagar Lake

Corn, chai and a lake wearing mountains

Fateh Sagar began in 1678 as a lake raised by Maharana Jai Singh, was wrecked by floods and was rebuilt in the 1880s under Maharana Fateh Singh with an embankment named after the Duke of Connaught. On one of its islands sits the Udaipur Solar Observatory, built there because the surrounding water steadies the air and gives astronomers sharp images of the sun.

The east bank near Bombay Market is a noisy evening jam of scooters and cold coffee stalls, so I went to Rani Road on the west bank at a quarter to six in the morning instead. The road bends along the foot of the hills, no stalls are allowed there, and I walked the water bund with a dozen joggers and not one scooter.

Rani Road follows the lake, and at sunset we walked the busier side with roasted corn rubbed with lime and masala, then cold coffee in a paper cup. Bicycles can be rented near the promenade, and an early ride before the vendors set up gives you the whole lake to yourself.

A small motor boat takes you across to Nehru Island, a garden with a boat shaped restaurant, and the ride is cheaper and wider than the Pichola cruise but with hills for a backdrop instead of palaces. I chose Pichola for the sunset and Fateh Sagar for the morning, and I would not swap them.

In the festival week families came out in their best clothes to eat bhutta and kachori on the bund, and little girls carried their barley pots as if they were trophies. My friend bought us each a kulhad of chai and we stood leaning on the parapet while the hills went from grey to pink.

In the monsoon, Hariyali Amavasya brings a fair along these banks, when the lake rises and half the town walks out to watch the water. Even on an ordinary evening the lake mirrors the hills so well that a long walk feels like a short one.

No. 10Hike to the Scenic Sunrise Lake Viewpoint at Bahubali Hills (Badi Lake)

The hour before the lake opens its eyes

We had booked an auto the evening before for a pickup at half past four, and the driver arrived with a flask and an apology for being two minutes early. The ride out to Badi Lake took about thirty minutes through streets where only the dogs and the bakers were awake.

The sunrise trail at Bahubali Hills begins in a dark that smells of wet earth and acacia. We left the auto at the base with a torch and reached the viewpoint as the first light slid across Badi Lake.

From the top the water holds the colour of the sky a few minutes longer than the land does, and the quiet is almost total. Carry a thin jacket, since the breeze is sharper than the city suggests, and come back down before the sun climbs high.

My friend said that during Gangaur, girls in the villages around the lake still fetch water in pots at this hour for the worship of Gauri, and we passed two of them on the road home with brass pots balanced on their heads. They greeted us with a formal Khamma Ghani and did not break their stride.

A few farm properties in the hills beyond Badi Lake offer tented stays and early breakfasts, and it is wiser to confirm with the owner than to arrive at dawn on trust. Camping in the open should only be done with the landowner's permission.

We came down for a breakfast of hot jalebi and kachori at a roadside stall and then slept for two hours before meeting the Ahar cenotaphs. It was the best sleep of the week and I do not regret a single minute of the early alarm.

No. 11Explore the Royal Carved Marble Memorial Chhatris at Ahar Cenotaphs

Where kings rest under carved umbrellas

Ahar was a settlement long before Udaipur existed, and its royal cremation ground holds hundreds of marble chhatris raised over the memory of Maharanas, queens and nobles of Mewar. We rode there by auto after our nap, and it was quiet enough that I could hear a woodpecker working on a neem tree across the road.

The grand cenotaphs of the Maharanas stand in a walled enclosure, while smaller ones scatter through the grounds like a field of stone umbrellas. The older cenotaphs are carved from a yellowish grey stone, and the later ones, from Maharana Sangram Singh II onward, are white marble, and in the first twenty minutes of morning light the porous yellow stone turns the colour of amber.

At the cenotaph of Sangram Singh II, carvings around the central pillar are said to stand for the queens and consorts who performed sati on that spot, and my friend lowered her voice as we walked past. The Mahasatiyan, the line of memorials to royal women, carries a silence different from the rest of the site.

Under this ground lies one of the oldest settled places in Rajasthan, a copper working culture several thousand years old that left pottery and tools now kept in the small Ahar museum. An older name for the settlement, Tambavati, is recorded in local history and means the place of copper, and I stood on the mound behind the cenotaphs and tried to imagine the furnaces.

The festival crowds of the ghats were three kilometres away and none of that sound reached here, which was the point of coming. Visit in soft morning light and keep to the paths, since local families still come to pay their respects.

No. 12Experience Rural Craft Demonstrations and Folk Arts at Shilpgram Crafts Village

A village built out of memory

Shilpgram sits in the Aravalli foothills west of the city, a crafts village built in the late 1980s with huts that represent the homes and trades of western India. We reached it by auto after lunch, and the driver waited outside because the lanes around it are the kind where finding a second auto home is a gamble.

Potters, weavers and puppet makers work in the open, and you can try the wheel while the potter corrects your wobble with a single finger. In the Rajasthan hut a woman was shaping small clay Gauri figures for the last days of Gangaur, and she showed me how to thumb the eyes in two quick presses.

The round mud huts called bhungas are modelled after the homes of Kutch and Barmer, and the thick circular walls were built to survive earthquakes. When I laid my palm on the inside wall it was cool even at three in the afternoon, and my friend said the small mirrors set into the plaster bounce the sun away from the mud.

The Shilpgram Utsav in December draws artists from across the country, but in quieter months the village feels like one long, slow afternoon. We ate a simple thali at a stall, sat under a tree while a folk singer tuned her instrument, and I did not look at my phone for an hour.

Buy directly from the artisan where you can, since a signed piece is worth more than a stall copy. I came away with a hand blocked cloth and a small clay lamp that I carried home wrapped in my sweater.

No. 13Shop for Authentic Miniature Paintings and Silver Jewellery at Hathi Pol and Bada Bazaar

Squirrel hair brushes and silver bangles

Hathi Pol, the Elephant Gate lane, is where miniature painters sit with their gold leaf and stone colours, and Bada Bazaar a short walk away sells bandhani and leheriya in the colours of the festival. We walked from the City Palace in ten minutes and shopped at golden hour, when the shop lamps come on and the lane smells of incense and fried dough.

Genuine Mewar miniatures are painted with fine squirrel hair brushes on paper or cloth using mineral pigments, and the lines show tiny human variations. Most of what hangs in shopfronts is a screen print touched up with a few brush strokes, so ask the artist to paint a stroke in front of you before you decide.

One painter held a miniature under my phone torch and showed me that the mineral blues and greens have a chalky, uneven shimmer, while synthetic dyes look flat and even. I bought a small painting of a peacock for what I thought was a fair price, and he threw in a lesson in how gold leaf is pressed with an agate stone.

A vendor claiming his shirts were dyed in real indigo let me smell the cloth, and my friend explained that fermented natural indigo smells earthy and mossy, while chemical dye smells sharp and metallic. She walked us away from three stalls on that test alone.

Silver jewellery is sold by weight, so ask to see it weighed and carry small notes for bargaining, which here is gentle and ends with tea. Leheriya scarves in festival colours are easiest to find in the weeks before Gangaur, and I saw tiny sets of clothing and gota trim being sold for dressing the Gauri images.

No. 14Marvel at the 10th Century Architecture by the Lotus Pond at Sahastra Bahu Temples (Nagda)

Two temples and a lotus pond that remembers a capital

Nagda lies about twenty two kilometres north of Udaipur beside a lotus pond, and its Sahastra Bahu temples date from the tenth century. We left the city at eight in a hired car, stopped for tea at a roadside stall, and reached the site while the school groups were still on their buses.

The name means the thousand armed one, a form of Vishnu, and local speech has shortened it to Sas Bahu, mother in law and daughter in law, which is why guides invent a family feud to explain the pair of temples. The two shrines were built for different forms of Vishnu, and no royal in laws were ever involved.

Nagda was an early capital of the Guhila rulers of Mewar, and its sandstone temples survived the sack of the town in the thirteenth century only in part. Carved bands show scenes from the Ramayana, dancers and deities, and the ceiling of the larger temple holds a finely patterned lotus.

I lay on the floor of the larger temple and looked up at the octagonal ceiling, where carved panels and stone chains hang free in the stone without any mortar. The caretaker saw me do it and nodded as if I had finally understood something.

In Gangaur week a group of village women had come to the pond with brass pots, filled them and walked away singing, which looked like the festival continuing without an audience. The pond fills with lotus in season and the evening light turns the sandstone gold, so combine the visit with Eklingji nearby and arrive before the groups.

No. 15Take a Scenic Countryside Monsoon Drive Away from Crowds through Rayta Hills and Alsigarh Valley

A road that smells of rain and maize

I came back in July for the other Udaipur, the one the lakes keep for themselves when the rains arrive. We drove into the Rayta hills and the Alsigarh valley with the windows down and no plan, past wet fields, small shrines and red earth houses with tiled roofs.

Clouds break against the Aravallis here, thin waterfalls appear on hill faces for a few days, and the air carries the smell of wet soil. The road forks without signs and phone signal drops, so the drive is best done with someone local.

Past the village of Nai on the way up toward Rayta, the temperature fell by three or four degrees in about fifteen minutes, and a wall of mist met us at the pass while Udaipur was dry and dusty behind us. My friend said the ridge acts as a barrier for the weather, and we stopped the car to listen to the silence of a high green plateau.

Gujjar shepherds grazed their cattle on the open slopes with no one else in sight, and one of them offered us buttermilk from a steel pot without asking where we were from. The only street light I saw all afternoon was the one on his motorcycle.

Keep to daylight, carry water and cash, and expect the pace to be set by cattle. Ask in the villages whether a Gavri troupe is passing through, since the answer sometimes turns an empty afternoon into the best evening of the trip.

We returned by dusk, because the single lane road has no lights and no guard rails. At Hariyali Amavasya the lakes spill over and the lanes of the old city are crowded with swings, and I stood on a bridge and watched Fateh Sagar overflow while strangers shared roasted corn.

No. 16Watch Sunrise Over Gangaur Ghat Before the Boats Begin

The ghat after the festival has gone to sleep

On the last morning I walked down to Gangaur Ghat at half past five, three minutes from my rooftop, to see the place where the procession had ended two nights before. The stone was still marked with petals and spilt kumkum, and a municipal worker was sweeping them into a pile with a long broom.

A priest was washing his face at the water's edge, pigeons were walking the steps in lines, and the first light touched the Jagdish spire before it reached the lake. I sat on a step that had held a crowd of hundreds, and the only sound was the broom.

The boats start later, and the lanes behind the ghat stay shuttered until seven, so this is the hour for photographs of the old city without a single stranger in the frame. When the first tea stall opened I was already waiting with my steel glass.

My friend came down at six with a packet of poha and two cups of chai, and we ate with our feet hanging over the water. She said the old women of her lane still sing Gangaur songs on these steps on the last evening, and that I had missed it by one night.

No. 17Walk Through the Vintage Car Collection Near Gulab Bagh

Chrome, leather and the garages of a royal family

The vintage car museum belongs to the Mewar royal family and sits in the grounds of the Garden Hotel near Gulab Bagh, about a twenty minute auto ride from Lal Ghat. We went after the ghat, with our poha still warm in our stomachs, and found the place nearly empty at opening time.

The cars on display include old Rolls Royce and Cadillac models from the royal garage, and the staff will tell you which Maharana drove which. A car I took to be a museum piece had a fresh garland on the bonnet, and the caretaker said it was for luck during Gangaur.

It is one of the quietest rooms in Udaipur, with polished fenders and a faint smell of old leather, and I spent forty minutes there without noticing the time. Pair it with Gulab Bagh next door and a cold drink at the garden cafe.

No. 18Walk the Rose Beds of Gulab Bagh and Meet the Zoo

Roses that end up in a jar of gulkand

Gulab Bagh, also called Sajjan Niwas Garden, was laid out in the 1880s by Maharana Sajjan Singh, the same ruler who started Sajjangarh and ordered the crystal. We wandered the shaded paths among morning walkers, yoga groups and an old man feeding squirrels from a paper bag.

The rose beds give the garden its name, and local makers turn the petals into gulkand, a sweet rose preserve, and into rose water. I bought a small jar from a shop near the gate and ate a teaspoon on a bench, and the smell stayed on the spoon until evening.

The garden also holds a small zoo and a library building, and I chose the roses and the shade over both. Locals come here to sit under the trees after a festival, and a group of girls from the Gangaur crowd was taking selfies by the fountain with their barley pots.

No. 19Sit with the Neighbourhood at Bohra Ganesh Ji

A dancing Ganesh and a banker's name

Bohra Ganesh Ji is a temple of about three hundred and fifty years, standing near Mohanlal Sukhadia University on the road that now carries its name. The idol is a standing, dancing Ganesh, and the shrine was built outside the old city walls of its day, which is why it became a place of its own.

The name comes from the Bohra community, who traditionally lent money, and people say Ganesh here grants requests the way a trusted banker grants a loan. My friend's mother had asked him for exam results for her son twenty years ago, and she still comes every Wednesday.

Entry is free, the queue moves quickly on weekdays and the evening aarti is a plain, warm affair. After Diwali the temple lays out a spread of fifty six dishes on Annakoot, and the neighbourhood spills into the road with plates.

No. 20: Beyond the CityPlan Day Trips to Eklingji, Haldighati, Nathdwara, Kumbhalgarh, Ranakpur and Chittorgarh

Roads out of Udaipur that every Mewar story eventually takes

Eklingji, about twenty two kilometres north, is the family temple of the Mewar rulers, and we stopped there after Nagda because the road passes it. The dynasty is said to rule in the name of Eklingji, with the Maharana as his dewan, and the idea explains why the temple still matters to the royal family.

Haldighati, about forty kilometres away, is where Maharana Pratap faced Akbar's army in 1576, and Chetak, his horse, is honoured at a memorial there. We walked the yellow soil of the pass and bought a bottle of rose petal essence from a stall, and the stall keeper told us Haldighati gets its name from the colour of the earth.

Nathdwara, about forty eight kilometres north, holds the Shrinathji temple and a workshop lane for pichwai painters, and Kankroli on the way has a Dwarkadhish temple beside Rajsamand Lake. Jaisamand, about fifty kilometres south east, is a vast artificial lake with islands and quiet boat rides.

Kumbhalgarh, about eighty five kilometres north west, has a fort wall stretching for kilometres along the ridge, and Ranakpur, about ninety kilometres away, has a Jain temple of carved marble pillars. We went on the sixth day, left at seven, and kept the whole day for the two because the road into the hills is slow.

Chittorgarh, about a hundred and fifteen kilometres away, is the old Mewar capital and needs a full day by itself. I did not go on this trip, and I would rather arrive rested than squeeze it between two other plans.

The Mewari TableEat Dal Baati Churma, Laal Maas and Mirchi Vada Where the Neighbourhood Eats

Smoke, ghee and red chilli

Dal baati churma arrives as hot wheat balls broken open and drowned in ghee, with panchmel dal and a sweet crumbled churma on the side. Bajre ki roti with lehsun chutney and ker sangri, a desert bean and berry dish, show the older, drier cooking of Mewar, and I ate them on a low table in my friend's grandmother's house.

Laal maas is the fiery red meat dish of Rajasthan, and gatte ki sabzi, gram flour dumplings in a curd gravy, is its vegetarian cousin. My friend ordered both at a family restaurant on the third night and told the waiter to make the laal maas the way he would for his own relatives.

For the street, look for mirchi vada, pyaaz kachori, malpua at festival time and kulhad chai at every corner. I had all four before ten in the morning on the second day, and I would do it again.

The best meals of the week came from my friend's family kitchen, where her aunt made a Gangaur thali with gunjiya, bajre ki roti and a ker sangri that smelled of the desert. I washed dishes afterwards to pay for it, and the aunt said I was the first guest to offer in fifteen years.

Where to StaySleep on a Haveli Rooftop or by the Lake: Stays by Area and Budget

A room with a view of the water, in any budget

The old city around Lal Ghat, Gangaur Ghat and Jagdish Chowk is the best base for a first visit, because most of the places in this diary sit within a twenty minute walk. Rooms range from dormitory beds in hostels to private rooms in family run haveli guesthouses, and rooftops with a lake view are the real prize.

The quieter Fateh Sagar side suits couples and families who want parks, space and a hotel with a garden, while the hills around Badi and Sajjangarh hold farm stays and tented camps. Luxury sits on the water or on the palace edge, with names such as the Taj Lake Palace, the Oberoi Udaivilas, The Leela Palace and Shiv Niwas Palace.

Book at least two to three months ahead for festival week, because rooms with lake views and good rooftops vanish first. My friend's aunt had held the rooftop for me for six weeks, which is the best tip I can offer.

The Quiet RulesLearn the Customs and Hacks Locals Teach Their Guests

Small courtesies that open big doors

The Mewari greeting is Khamma Ghani, and the invitation Padharo Mhare Desh, come to my country, is meant sincerely. Refusing a cup of chai is received as a small unkindness, so accept it and drink slowly.

During Gangaur, ask before photographing a woman carrying the image, since the ritual is a private prayer in a public street. Agree a fare before sitting in an auto, remove shoes before every shrine, and carry a scarf for temples and the cool evenings.

Large cars struggle in the narrow lanes of the old city, and I gave up on taxis for anything inside the walls within a day. Autos, two wheeler rentals, bicycles and your own legs work better, and a small electric cart takes you from the road to the palace gate for a small fee.

PlanItineraries, Costs, Bookings and Practical Notes

Everything useful, kept at the end