India. Udaipur

We reached Udaipur by train from Ajmer, the main railway line located near Pushkar. We spent two days here, visiting its main palace, taking a boat ride around the lake, visiting a charming temple dedicated to the god Vishnu, and enjoying the sunset from a rooftop café...

Map of the journey through India...

We arrived in Udaipur in the afternoon and immediately took a tuk-tuk to the central tourist part of the city, which is located near Lake Pichola and close to the palace and Jagdish Temple... Here we found and checked into a room in one of the hotels, and after leaving our things, we went up to the rooftop café to look at Lake Pichola from above...

Descending, we went for a walk to Gangaur Ghat, which was very close to us...

Then we crossed to the other side of the lake to Ambrai Ghat, which offered a beautiful view of the palace...

We also met a parrot here...

Since it was quite hot, almost 35 degrees, we went to enjoy some ice cream in a very cozy café with a nice view and Indian music...

Then we headed back to "our side" through the colorful streets of Udaipur...

Jagdish Temple was very close to our hotel, so we visited it twice - in the evening and the next morning... The marble temple with fantastic carvings, built in 1651, was probably our favorite of all we saw in Udaipur...

The temple's sanctuary has an idol - the deity Lord Jagannath, which in the local language is the name for the god Vishnu or Krishna (his avatar)... The idol is carved from black stone and has four arms, decorated with flowers and various ornaments...

The carvings on the temple's outer walls were very delicate and attracted the most attention...

The temple is built on a high terrace, reached by 32 marble steps at a fairly steep angle... From here, there is a beautiful view of the square nearby...

This is what the entrance to the temple looks like from below...

We watched the sunset in the rooftop café, with a beautiful view of Lake Pichola surrounded by mountains...

In Kipling's collection of stories "The Jungle Book," which tells about a child raised by wolves in the Indian jungles, the character of the black panther named Bagheera came from Udaipur... Perhaps this was inspired by the wild nature of the city around the lake, which in the author's time was not as developed... And looking at the sunset and the surrounding mountains in the distance, one can imagine those times when the city was much smaller...

We had dinner with Thali (which translates to "tray") - a traditional assortment of various Indian dishes... Vegetable curry, paneer curry, dal (pea-lentil soup-puree), and vegetables with roti flatbreads...

In the morning, we again went up to Jagdish Temple...

Cleansing our aura in the temple, we headed to the local palace, which was built over 400 years with funds from the ruling Mewar dynasty...

The City Palace in Udaipur was built in a bright style and is considered the largest of its kind in the state of Rajasthan. It was built on a hilltop combining Rajasthani - Rajput architecture...