Epiphany central
Liza Campbell on the perfection of staying put in Udaipur Ihave just returned from a shortish trip to Udaipur. I’ve got one word to say about this southern Rajasthani city, and that is — go. I had an epiphany while away, several in fact, but that’s India for you epiphany central. The main insight was a simple one: that I had harboured an utterly misguided conviction that any trip to India necessitated a minimum of a month’s stay, because there is just so much to see. For that reason I had never found time to revisit the country since first going in my early twenties. That first experience had been somewhat harrowing — not least because my travelling companion Ned and I inadvertently spent, within the first three days, half of our travelling money in a fatal rupee exchange-rate miscalculation. Also, despite sharing a bed most nights, we weren’t actually sleeping with each other, so mutual irritation emerged as a form of light relief, or possibly dark. Oh, and Ned insisted on travelling with a portable television (in the fruitless hope of picking up the England v. India cricket tour), a guitar wrapped in jumpers, a briefcase full of cassettes, a personal stereo and his three suitcases — one full of hardbacks about drugs.
When not shouting ‘Hellraiser!’ at every cow we swerved around, Ned studied the chemical formula of ketamine. Meanwhile I spent hours pouring over maps and timetables, calculating whether a 300-mile detour to some abandoned city (Hampi) on our way to the largest free-standing monolith on Earth (Shravanabelagola) was even slightly feasible. Ned never concerned himself with these plans. Whenever I tried to discuss the hideous itineraries I was cre ating, his reply was always, ‘Hey, let’s just say we went.’ Subconsciously, I felt that any visit to India contractually obliged me to see everything in one go — whereas, in fact, going there for ten days and (joy!) staying in one place turns out to be perfect. I resisted travelling out steerage, as on my first visit, and instead flew Jet Airways (www.jetairways.com). I arrived completely refreshed, having slept the entire flight in a bed dressed in charming Guantanamo Bay-style slumber wear. We made local explorations with a drivercum-guide and marvelled at his horn-asbreak driving style. Wherever you look in India there is cartwheeling vibrancy. Here, a painted elephant; there, a crocodile of Heidi-plaited schoolgirls; on the right, a harvest play being performed to an audience of cyclists; on the left, a funeral procession following a flowerstrewn stretcher and everywhere, happy cows.
Even a week would have been enough, but we factored in a couple of days for being ill, which was lucky because, after one too many Senokot and gunpowder curry dinners, my body threw a digestive tantrum and I spent 36 hours lying on my bed, too weak to do anything more than stare glassily at my ceiling fan whirling round and round and listening to the tree frogs.
Once recovered, our first outing was to the City Palace that dominates the city skyline. It is sited almost as dramatically as Edinburgh Castle, but architecturally is more like Hampton Court — in sandstone. Within the palace is the maddest collection of crystal ware — a shopping splurge that featured fairly normal objects like lamps and fruit bowls, but also included beds, crystal chairs and writing desks. Throughout the palace there are recessed verandahs from where princesses in purdah, behind coloured glass panels, could look down upon court ceremonies. Trying not to let pointless feminist hackles rise, I distracted myself with one of the many indoor swings used by playful Maharanas to pass the time between tiger hunts and grooming their beards into middle partings. From the family portraits, it seems that this style is still à la mode today.
When not combing their facial hair into arresting styles, the Maharanas were tireless palace-builders, and teetering on a high peak to the northwest of Udaipur is another palace, the Monsoon. I asked our guide whether it was built to avoid malaria around the lake during monsoons. He looked surprised and said, ‘Oh no. For fun.’ Every sundown, we took slow boat rides across Lake Pichola, passing the white marbled Lake Palace (half small ocean-going liner, half slightly down-at-heel hotel in Hove), before docking below the City Palace and watching gleaming boys leap into the water in the silky evening light. Bliss.
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