Udaipur Photos 2014

Photos from inside the Royal City Palace, Udaipur. The Palace is still home to the King of Udaipur, Arvind Singh Mewar, who lives in one wing of the Palace complex, while the rest has become a museum. The entire building had an air of decaying elegance. Click on the images for a larger view.

: Mews inside the royal palace, Udaipur

: Lord Ganesha, remover of obstacles

: Room inside the royal palace

: View of Udaipur through a stained glass place window

: Dappled colored sunlight in an old palace room

: VIew of Lake Pichola from the royal palace

More photos from around Udaipur city. Click on the images for some stories behind the pictures.

: Lovely Udaipur girls

: Rajish, puppeteer

: Carving inside the Jagdish Temple

: Sadhu (holy man), Jagdish Temple

: Colorful Rajasthani puppets

: Maha Laxshmi at the Goddess Temple

: Maha Kali at the Goddess Temple

: Jagdish Temple at night

: A naughty monkey

: At the fruit market

: An Udaipur street

: View of the city from the Goddess Temple hill

: Holy cow

Probably one of my favorite days during my Rajasthan trip was my visit to Kumbhalgarh Hill Fort. Famed for its wall, which second only in length the to Great Wall of China. Sitting on top of the Fort, high in the Aravalli mountain range, the air was so pure and the view so magnificent, that all I could do was sit in quiet reverie. Click on the images for a larger view.

: Kumbhalgarh Hill Fort

: Roof top of the fort

: View of the Aravalli Mountains

: Old wall painting insdie the fort

: Enjoying the view

: Long wall stretching off into the distance

Magnificent Jain temple at Ranakpur. Made entirely of marble and supported by 1,444 carved columns. The Jains are an ascetic sect whose members sometimes slowly starve themselves to death to reach divine emancipation. Because their tirthankaras (saints) have all reached moksha (spiritual liberation), there was a tangible emptiness in the place, a “divine absence.” So different from the Hindu temples that I visited, which were full of divine presence, but just as meditative nonetheless. Click on the images for a larger view.