Taj Lake Palace, Udaipur

Taj Lake Palace occupies the whole of a small island in Lake Pichola, at Udaipur in Rajasthan, opposite the City Palace of the Maharanas of Mewar. It was built between 1743 and 1746 as Jag Niwas, a summer palace for Maharana Jagat Singh II, became a hotel in 1963 and has been run by Taj since 1971. It has 65 rooms and 18 suites.

It was built for the hot months, and for the water.

A palace for the summer

The Maharanas used Jag Niwas as a retreat from the city across the lake, a place of courtyards, fountains and pavilions open to the breeze off the water.

In the early 1960s Maharana Bhagwat Singh decided to turn it into Udaipur's first luxury hotel. The designer Didi Contractor advised on the conversion through the decade. The Taj group took over its management in 1971 and enlarged it, and the palace was restored again in 2000.

Rooms over the lake

The rooms and suites are arranged around the palace courtyards, many with windows on the lake or the City Palace. The hotel's butlers are, by tradition, descendants of the families who served the palace when it was a royal residence.

Neel Kamal serves Rajasthani and Indian cooking, Bhairo European dishes, and Jharokha is open around the clock. Amrit Sagar is the bar. The spa offers Indian and international therapies, and dinners can be served on a royal barge on the lake.

Udaipur from the water

The palace is the centrepiece of a city built around its lakes. Udaipur has a second island palace, Jag Mandir, further south on Lake Pichola, and since 2021 a new kind of neighbour: Raffles Udaipur, on its own island in Udai Sagar, a lake to the east of the city.

Sources: Taj Hotels; Wikipedia.