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Directory of hotels and accommodations in
Rajasthan. Offers all the hotel related
information. You can search for the hotels and
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tours.
Converted to a hotel in 1961,
the Lake Palace instantly became one of the
world's most famed inns. Real kings and queens
flocked to this floating palace, along with
Hollywood royalty like Vivian Leigh and Sean
Connery. It was Roger Moore, though, who cemented
the Lake Palace's place in the collective
consciousness by using the heavenly hotel and its
surreal setting for the fantasy island retreat in
007's Octopussy.
Such fame and opulence don't come cheaply, or
easily. Despite room rates starting at $250, the
plush Lake Palace is booked a year ahead for peak
season. The seven historic suites, each uniquely
outfited—one with a golden swing—cost $650 a
night, plus tax. Turbaned boatmen ferry hotel
guests to the exclusive island, as well as to
other palaces dotting Lake Picola, but many
visitors have been politely turned away with the
sad refrain: "No reservation!"
Still, majestic Rajasthan can make such slights
seem trivial. The one-of-a-kind Lake Palace sets a
lofty standard, but in India's wild western state,
kingly living is commonplace. Nearly every hill is
lined with a stone wall leading to the local
version of Camelot. The castles are only part of
the allure of this historic land, named for the
Rajputs, warrior clans that ruled scores of
kingdoms for centuries. With a highly evolved code
of chivalry and honor, they were often likened to
the Knights of the Round Table. Indeed, there is
more than a bit of King Arthur-style enchantment
in this storybook realm of castles, swords and
camels.
The
desert backdrop only makes the population
more mesmerizing. Women sport scarves and sarongs
in every color under the sun. Men don plain white
robes, but top them off with turbans in
luminescent shades of yellow, red, orange and
maroon. And every Rajasthan male prides himself
upon possessing the state's signature facial
feature: a magnificent, thick, wavy mustache.
Visits to Rajasthan usually begin in Jaipur, the
state's largest city and a corner of the Golden
Triangle (with New Delhi and Agra) that is India's
major tourist route. Nicknamed the Pink City,
Jaipur is a rose-tinted wonder, from the walls of
its enormous castle to the houses that climb
pell-mell up the hills.
As befits a capital, Jaipur claims a surfeit of
palaces, including perhaps the single most
spectacular: Rambagh, a sprawling estate that is
still a royal-family residence. With its enormous
polo grounds, occasionally still used for quaint,
if tedious, bouts of elephant polo, Rambagh was
the first Raj palace to make the conversion to
tourist quarters in 1957, not long after the
Rajpramukh rulers were abolished in favor of
elected governors.
The palace still sets the tone, treating guests to
the splendors that defined the Raj of old. There
are puppet shows for children on the lush lawns,
and guests can trundle the grounds in old royal
carriages or marvel at architectural oddities like
a dance floor on springs. The Rambagh's
transformation into a hotel by flamboyant Maharaja
Mansingh—a jetsetting polo player—was termed
scandalous at the time. Soon a few other monuments
followed suit, but it wasn't until the tourist
boom of the past quarter-century that such
conversions became the norm. |
