City Palace and Shopping

Lazing about for the morning and then off on foot to the City Palace, to be greeted by hordes of school kids leaving the adjoining school. Dodging the countless offers of guides we made our way inside.

The palace is made up of several smaller palaces built over the last 500 years, and is still the home to the current (76th) Maharana of Udaipur. The building is a maze of stairs and doorways, designer to cnfuse any attempted invasion and also pretty successfull with visiting tourists.

Some of the rooms are extensively mirrored, and lit by coloured glass windows creating a wonderland-like effect.

It was nice to see that extensive refurbishment had been carried out on the palace and that the work was continuing with some paintings being restored in one of the courtyards.

After visiting the Palace we decided to take a look around some of the shops nearby. We ended up at Monsoon Collection on Bhattyani Chohatta, which will make made-to-measure clothes as well as sell ready-made clothes along with bed covers and wall hangings. Vic arranged for two pairs of trousers and two tops to be made and I was persuaded to go for a made-to-measure linen shirt (Rs350, about 4 pounds for the shirt). Following all that we headed back to the hotel to try their home-made vegetarian thali for dinner. After very nice meal we retired to our room.