Tale of Udaipur's old city

On a recent visit to Udaipur was suggested an infamous hotel in old city for stay, Udaipur as we all know is city of lakes, known for majestic Palaces, many of those have been now converted to luxurious hotels and are the prime business of this city.

On reaching the city, the hunt for uncovering our hotel was initiated and I, began enquiring about the direction for reaching our terminus, traversing through narrow lanes for tracing the almost impossible location, this was in stark contrast from what we drove from Ahmedabad to Udaipur which is an excellent four lane highway road.  

At some point with no sight of the hotel I, parked my car and had to navigate through foot to discover the same. After discreet enquiries eureka I could locate ‘Hotel Tiger’ near Gangaur Ghat Chandpol. I wondered how Christopher Columbus would have stumbled upon America.

The roads leading to the hotel was not clean. Upon reaching the hotel I, was informed that this being an off-season they are not in a position to provide us any room service including tea/ coffee, breakfast, lunch etc. and we have to manage it on our own. To add to our already existing problems we were informed that they do not operate lift, and hence the only choice was to ascend the stairs, no parking space too sir was the reply. I was only blaming myself for such a choice of a hotel.

However on a closer look, I fell in awe of the property. The interiors were great as it was built on lines of a heritage property. Both the lobby and rooms were spotless. The white marble was sparkling and the ambience soothing. I wondered how in such a congested place they are able to manage and pull customers and run the hotel.

The whole marked was buzzling with activity. The way to the hotel was steered by a series of courtyards, overlapping terraces, corridors and gardens - a harmonic glut hard to describe. The place is housed with many antique articles, paintings, decorative furniture and utensils which would be attracting thousands of visitors every day and announcing availability of roof tops restaurants.

We have shops by the name of Bougainvillaea, Café Isaac with multilingual hoardings and this really caught my attention and to my surprise was made to understand that Gangaur ghat was earlier only visited by foreigners who used to spend months camping and visiting in and around places. Gangaur Ghat in Udaipur is the prime location for travellers, backpackers with lots of hotels, restaurants and cafes. This place is next to the famous City Palace and Bagore-ki-Haveli which is just walking distance away from the Ghat. This part of the city is beautifully restored and still holds the heritage of the ancient architecture.  I could still observe lot of foreigners walking across the streets.

For the convenience of foreign visitors all the hoardings had three or four foreign languages, infact the hotel menu card also had translation of names of food in four different languages. Incidentally all the hoardings screamed that they are recommended by Lonely Planet including the daily cooking classes.

The food that was dished upon was continental, Mexican, Korean and less of Indian. Cafe Edelweiss served continental dishes and sweets, Irish Coffee, Arabic Coffee, Cappuccino, Expresso, Mango crumble, Apple crumble, eggs, toast, Iced Tea.

I, was briefed that this entire area  experiences full visitors during winter season, majority of them being foreigners and the hotels are packed to their capacity and would be the best time of visit. The biggest surprise was the owner of the hotel was not an Indian but a German Gunther Maria Norrenburg settled in Udaipur for over a decade.

The purpose of writing this piece was though I, felt negativity at the first instance but there is so much to observe, learn and understand that this place can definitely be visited by families and would be a great place to spend and unwind.