Hotel Raj Palace had a roof top restaurant, which was decorated in typical palatial style. We were impressed by the ambience there. It was quite cool inside and we enjoyed the terrific view from the roof top. The City palace was very near to the hotel and was a magnificent structure, dominating the Udaipur skyline!
We ordered for a typical Rajasthani style Biriyani. It was not anything to rave about. But barely enough to gratify our appetite!
After finishing our lunch, we went to the traditional shops in the street, selling different curios. We did some shopping and I must say that we got a terrific deal. Some of the traditional stuff sold there were much cheaper than Pune!
The time was close to 6 pm then and we decided to go to Fateh Sagar Lake to view the sunset. HVK sir had also recommended it highly!
We started our drive to the lake by 6.10 pm. The streets in Udaipur were very narrow and it was a very steep climb to the top. One needs to have perfect control over the clutch, as the maximum speed possible there is just under 10 kilometre per hour. We crawled forward at a snail’s pace with lots of autos and bikes honking like hell and overtaking us at every possible turn and opportunity.
We also had to be very careful about cows jaywalking in the narrow streets. We came across at least 20 cows en-route to the lake. We were flabbergasted to see that the cows cared a hoot about cars moving about and stood their ground tenaciously! We had no other option but to drive around them!
To our great relief, the roads became wide after approximately two kilometres and joined a spacious two lane main road to the lake and then to the city! We felt very pleased to be finally out of the narrow old city streets.
Soon we reached Fateh Sagar Lake, which is called the Pride of Udaipur and was made in the year 1678 by Maharana Jai Singh. The lake was very beautiful and over two kilometres long. We were treated to a magnificent sunset there. The sun played hide and seek with us because of the heavy cloud cover, but not before painting the horizon red! We were extremely lucky to see a comet in the sky! Its luminous tail lit up the sky and was stunningly gorgeous!
After the sunset, we drove to the other side of the lake, where there were lots of eateries. We were looking forward to having our favourite ice creams after a couple of days. We also had very tasty Momos and piping hot Nescafe from one of the eateries on the banks of the beautiful Fateh Sagar.
We spent quite a lot of time enjoying the freezing cold temperature near the lake. There was also a strong breeze from the lake and we were shivering in no time. Luckily we had taken our woolens and covered ourselves well.
We decided to go back to our hotel and left the lake by 8.30 pm and reached Gulab Bagh by 9 pm. We had driven just 17 kilometres that day. We decided to have dinner from a hotel other than Hotel Chirag. A majority of the hotels in Udaipur were vegetarian. We had a tough time finding a nice restaurant and decided to walk to Suraj Pole junction. We saw a big multiplex, Ashoka there. We were stunned to see that platinum tickets for the film ‘3 Idiots’ in that theatre cost a whopping Rs. 450 per head!!!
We were tempted to go for the movie, but eventually decided against it as our tummies were growling in displeasure!
We walked back to Gulab Bagh area and decided to have our dinner at US Pizza Corner, very near to our hotel. We reached the outlet by 10 pm and went inside without thinking twice.
Soon a bearer came with the menu card and we were dumbfounded to see that the outlet was a pure vegetarian one! We had a tough time ordering a pizza from a vegetarian menu and finally ordered a bottle of water and a brownie.
We quickly got out of the restaurant and went to another restaurant by the name Green Chilly, and had a good vegetarian meal consisting of Naan and Paneer. We finally returned back to our hotel by 12 am. The streets of Udaipur were completely deserted by then and we greatly enjoyed the solitude.
We finally retired for the night by 12.20 am and had a peaceful sleep!