The Palace Issue

March is the tail of the cool season in Rajasthan — the last few comfortable weeks before the heat comes down like a lid — and Udaipur is the place to spend them. They call it the city of lakes, and the whole city is arranged around Lake Pichola: the great City Palace runs along the eastern shore, the old town climbs the hill behind it, and out on the water sit two island palaces that are now hotels you can book a room in.

The most famous of them, the Taj Lake Palace, appears to float on the lake — white marble, reached only by boat — and it is as much of a fantasy as it looks. The Oberoi Udaivilas, spread along the shore, is the roomier, more private alternative with the same view back across the water. Either way the pleasure is the same: watching the City Palace turn gold at dusk and then floodlit, from the middle of the lake.

It is an easy place to be sold a dream, so we try to be useful about it instead — which palace actually earns its price, where the atmospheric lanes of the old town meet the water, and how to treat Udaipur as the living, working city it is rather than a film set. The rooftop restaurants line up at the water's edge for a reason; a table facing the lake at sunset is worth booking ahead.

The city also makes a fine base for a day out into the hills. West of Udaipur, the enormous fort at Kumbhalgarh wraps a whole mountain in a rampart said to be among the longest walls in the world, and nearby Ranakpur holds one of the most intricately carved marble temples in India. Together they make a long, rewarding day and a good counterweight to all that water.

Vivienne Hartwell, Editor-in-Chief