Udaipur

Udaipur exists because an older capital failed. The Sisodia rulers of Mewar had held Chittorgarh, a vast fortified hill to the east, for centuries, and their resistance to outside powers became the central legend of Rajput history. With Chittorgarh exposed to the artillery warfare of the age, Maharana Udai Singh II moved his court west into the folds of the Aravalli hills, where a lake already dammed in the 14th century offered water and defence. He founded his new city there in 1559 and named it after himself.

The move did not end the conflict: his son Maharana Pratap fought Akbar's army at Haldighati in 1576 and spent years in the hills rather than submit, a story still recited across Rajasthan. Mewar eventually came to terms with the Mughals, and successive Maharanas spent the 17th and 18th centuries building — the City Palace grew wing by wing, Jag Mandir and the Lake Palace rose on their islands, and gardens, ghats and temples filled the shore. Maratha raids weakened the state in the 18th century, and in 1818 it accepted British protection.

Mewar merged into independent India after 1947 and Udaipur became a district capital. The royal family turned parts of the palace into hotels and museums, and from the 1960s, helped by films shot on the lakes, the city built a tourism economy that now shapes it. Growth has spread east and south of the walls, while the old city and its lakes remain the centre of both civic life and the visitor trade.

Mewar's court traditions are unusually visible in daily life. The former ruling house still lives in part of the City Palace and takes a public role at Holi and at Gangaur, when the goddess is carried to the lake in procession. Rajput notions of lineage, hospitality and honour remain strong, and regional heroes — Maharana Pratap above all — are commemorated in statues, museums and school lessons.

The city has a long craft tradition. Miniature painting in the Mewar style, with bold colour and court scenes, is taught and sold throughout the old city; nearby Nathdwara produces Pichwai cloth paintings of Krishna; and puppetry, folk dance and the Manganiyar and Langa musical traditions of western Rajasthan are performed nightly at Bagore Ki Haveli and other venues. Silver, textile block printing and leather-bound papermaking all have workshops here.

Religion is mixed: mainly Hindu, with important Jain communities and temples, and a Muslim minority with mosques in the old bazaars. Shrines are working places of worship rather than monuments, and visitors are expected to dress modestly and keep out of rituals. Udaipur has also become one of India's favourite settings for large weddings, and in season the city fills with processions, bands and fireworks that have nothing to do with the tourist calendar.

About 650,000 people live in the city, making it the biggest centre of southern Rajasthan. Tourism and hospitality are the most visible employers, but the district economy also rests on marble and stone quarrying, zinc mining in the surrounding hills, cement, handicrafts and agriculture, and the city is a regional hub for hospitals, courts and universities.

Days are shaped by heat and water. The bazaars open mid-morning, close through the afternoon and come alive again after dark; the ghats are busiest at dawn with washing and bathing, and again at sunset when families gather on the steps. Much of the old city lives above its shops, in havelis divided between families, while newer suburbs to the south and east have the schools, malls and apartment blocks of a growing Indian city.

The lakes are the central public issue. They depend entirely on monsoon rain and on catchments increasingly built over; weak monsoons drop the water level sharply, and sewage, encroachment and silting have all been the subject of campaigns and court orders. Traffic in lanes never designed for vehicles, pressure on water supply in the dry months, and the balance between conservation of the old city and the demands of tourism are the recurring debates of local politics.

Mewar's cooking sits inside the wider Rajasthani tradition but leans on the hills and the region's vegetarian majority. Dal baati churma is the standard feast: wheat balls baked hard in coals, cracked open and soaked in ghee, eaten with dal and a sweetened crumble of the same dough. Gatte ki sabzi, gram-flour dumplings in a yoghurt gravy, kadhi, and dried desert vegetables such as ker sangri fill the everyday thali, with maize and millet breads in winter.

The Rajput kitchens added meat cooked for a hunting court. Laal maas, mutton in a chilli-red gravy, is the best-known dish of the region; safed maas is its milder cousin in a cashew and yoghurt sauce. In the Mewar hills these dishes are associated with smoked preparations cooked over wood, and they appear on many restaurant menus even in a mostly vegetarian city.

Snacks and sweets are eaten all day. Pyaaz kachori and mirchi bada come hot from the fryer in the bazaars, while ghevar, feeni and milk-based sweets fill the shops before festivals. Sweet and salted lassi is served in clay cups, and masala chai is constant. In summer the city drinks chaas, thin spiced buttermilk, and in season the local mahua and custard apple appear in markets along with mangoes brought up from Gujarat.