Why Udaipur is a journey worth taking slowly
On a city built for sitting still, and what that gives a traveller who is ready to receive it
There is a particular hour in Udaipur, somewhere between four and five in the afternoon, when the lake stops moving. Not entirely, a boat drifts, a pigeon resettles on a balustrade, but the water itself seems to agree with the light, and for a long stretch nothing is in a hurry. From the right balcony you can hear a temple bell across the Pichola and the soft slap of laundry against a ghat. That is the sound of Udaipur thinking.
We came to this city, again and again, the way one returns to a chapter that has been underlined. And we noticed something our travellers, those in their sixties and seventies, mostly, kept saying without quite meaning to. I could sit here for a while. Not as a complaint about the walking. As permission. Udaipur, it turns out, is one of the few places in Rajasthan that gives you that permission without making you feel you have missed something.
Jaipur is grand, and Jodhpur is theatrical, and Jaisalmer is far. They are cities to be walked through, climbed into, met with stamina. Udaipur is different in shape. It is built around water rather than around a fort, and water asks for stillness. The old city sits low. The palaces sit higher, yes, but their best rooms, the ones built for queens and for old kings, open onto views, not onto staircases. The architecture itself was designed by people who understood that sitting and looking is a form of arrival.
This matters more than the brochures admit. For a traveller in their late sixties, the difference between a city you must conquer and a city that opens slowly is the difference between a journey remembered fondly and a journey endured. We design our Udaipur days around the second kind.
A morning, for us, begins gently. There is no five a.m. departure for a fort. Breakfast is unhurried, and the first outing is a short drive, never a long one, to the City Palace, where the inner courtyards are reached at a pace the body forgives. A local English-speaking guide walks with the group, and walks at the speed of the slowest among us, which is the slow way, which is the only way that lets you actually see a wall. We pause often. There is no shame in pausing. There are benches.
By midday, lunch is at a vetted Indian restaurant within easy reach of the hotel, thalis, dal-baati if the group is curious, a properly made kadhi for those who prefer it. We do not make our travellers improvise with cuisines they did not come for. Indian food, made well, is part of the comfort.
The afternoon is the lake. Always the lake. A boat ride on Pichola at the hour the light begins to soften, with Jag Mandir floating in the middle distance like a thought someone left on the water. There is no climbing involved. There is no rush. The boat moves at the pace of the boat. From this vantage, the Aravallis announce themselves quietly, and the white of the palaces takes on the colour of weak tea, then apricot, then something the language does not quite have a word for.
We stay in hotels chosen for two things: proximity to the lake, and lifts that work. Both matter. A vetted 4-star property with reliable air-conditioning, ground-floor accessible dining, and rooms that do not require a corridor expedition to reach. The romance of a heritage haveli is real, but our travellers also need a switch that turns on when pressed, and we choose accordingly.
Evenings in Udaipur belong to the rooftops. A cultural performance, folk music, sometimes the puppetry the region is known for, and then a dinner that does not stretch past ten. We have noticed, in designing this journey for the way our travellers travel now, that a good evening ends early enough for a proper night’s sleep. That is not a small thing at sixty-eight.
There is a reason we place Udaipur near the close of our Rajasthan journeys rather than at the start. By then, the group has loosened. People are sleeping better. The walking, such as it is, has become a rhythm rather than an effort. Udaipur receives all of this. It does not demand more.
On the last morning, before the flight back to Delhi, many of our travellers ask if there is time for one more look at the lake. There usually is. We sit. We do not speak much. The water carries on doing what water does in this city, which is almost nothing, almost embarrassingly simple, and exactly enough.
