Hello All,
What happens when a group of friends decide to take off to an odd 3000km+ road trip to land of kings and palaces? Obviously, one helluva ride and enormous fun! We started from Mumbai at around 4.30pm (bunking the office hours, after all!). Plan A had always been to drive wherever we could till 12am, spot book a room/s anywhere midway the route on highway and then continue journey to Udaipur next morning! Plan B never existed, until boys of the group decided to chuck PLAN A and just travel straight up to Udaipur!!! Sounds fun! We reached around 5.30 am in deserted lanes of Udaipur, with no hotels booked, with no hotels yet open to even answer our question - do you have rooms? lol..we drove to Fateh Sagar Lake, parked the car and slept in the car itself till it was 8.30am (but then that's how the road trips are!). After some tea and snacks in the car, by the lake, we again started our hotel hunt and found a very decent rooms for us. We paid 2000Rs per night for a room. Bathroom was clean, enough space to walk a ramp after getting dressed up and soft bed, what else do we need for a room? BTW, Fateh Sagar Lake was serenely beautiful, picturesque, gorgeous and chilling in the wee hours! What a beautiful lake it was!
After some rest and heavy breakfast, we started our sight seeing to City Palace. The weather in day time was hot though nights would get chilling. Check weather all the time. I had carried summer and winter, both season clothes for day and night respectively! Carry loads of sunscreen, hats, sunglasses for day time and socks and thermals for nights! Entry Tickets to this place is whopping 250rs for Indian National. 250rs for camera! Hire narrowcasters, a multilingual audio tour which we actually found out that it gave us more details about the history and geography of that certain place, than a normal guide would give. We would hire one device. One from the group would use headphones and other from the group would hear from device itself. The fort is a huge fort and you would end up spending more than 2 hours here. We had lunch at local small time restaurant right outside the entry of the palace.
This fort sits right atop the mountain and is must visit during the time of sunset. The view of sun getting down the aravalli ranges is fabulous. There were people lined up on the fort walls just to view this phenomena. And were screaming and cheerful as soon as sun set completely behind the hills! Then later we went to another local restaurant for dinner and were back to hotel rooms early.
After Scrumptious breakfast in our hotel itself, we started off to Saheliyon ki bari. 10rs entry and is a huge garden with various sections. We were bored after with just 2 and after few photographs, we left from there.
YJHD got us here. Its beautiful 5 star property. Wish to come here for just a retreat and nothing else! We were supposed to go to Chittorgarh from here. But we dropped the plan and instead left for Kumbhalgarh directly as Chittorgarh was turning out to be little far off from our planned route. Whilst travelling , we booked a haveli on MMT (Make My Trip) at Ghanerao.
Ghanerao Royal Castle - This haveli was huge and beautiful but it was too far from Kumbhalgarh. We reached Ghanerao at around 4 and we left for Kumbhalgarh which was 50kms away from Ghanerao. We reached Kumbhalgarh at around 5.30 and the sun was on verge of setting and we couldn't enjoy the magical fort, instead we saw the Kumbhalgarh musical story which is worth watching. We drove back to Ghanerao and found out that the entire palace was empty and had no one but just us. We were terrified with the thought but bravely put up through entire night! After breakfast, we left for Jodhpur! We shortlisted few hotels on MMT and just to avoid our Ghanerao experience again, we thought we should personally first check hotels before booking. Finally, after lot of hotel hopping, we managed to get one and after check-in, we left for market stroll and food. Had yummiest rabdi on cold night on streets of Jodhpur. Everything was shut by 10 and we returned back to hotel room.
After breakfast, we checked out and dumped our bags in car and left for majestic Mehrangarh Fort! Oh boy, what an enormous fort it was. So huge, so strong, so mighty! We took an audio tour guide. Audio tour guides are best thing to happen when you are in historical place. It gives you all minutest details which a guide would usually forget. It also shares you stories and everything related to that section of fort. This fort would take your 4-5 hours. We had planned to visit another fort which was just nearby but since we were tired with so much walking, we just skipped one more fort and instead we left for Bijolai. Yes, our night stay was booked in Bijolai Palace. Its a palace turned into resort. We booked it though MMT again and this was wonderful place with its own lake!
After our breakfast here at scenic resort, we checked out and left for Umaid Bhavan Palace.
Wow, this place spread in acres, has a 5 star hotel, a small part of palace served as a museum for public and a small part of palace dedicated to royal family who was still residing there. The Museum boasts bout everything that a royal family inherited, right from cars to cutleries to clothes.
From here, we left for our long awaited drive to Jaisalmer!!! What a drive this had been. With windmills around and smooth roads, our drive was just worth everything. We directly went to Sam where we had booked a tent through MMT again for night stay. We wanted to experience tent in the thar desert! We went to jeep safari! This is must do! The way jeep is drove is suppppper adventurous and risky if you dont hold yourself right. We were taken to thar desert and there we enjoyed the sunset. After coming back, we enjoyed cultural show and dinner here and signed of to sleep on chilly night. The tent owners gave us 3-4 blankets to rid the cold and boy, we had an awesome night and sleep.
Next day, we checked out and we left for Tanot and Longewala. This one was one amazing drive with sand dunes and wind mills around! Tanot is war memorial of 1971 Indo-Pak war. This place has war museum, a small auditorium that plays highlights of 1971 war. It has all bunkers, vehicles etc. that were used in war and left by enemy.
From here, we left for Longewala. This has a devi temple which was untouched by bullets or bombs in 1971 war. After this we left for Jaisalmer city, checked into hotel. Went for an evening stroll near Jaisalmer fort and found one pizza maker. Had an awesome pizza, local panipuri (again yumm!) and then got back to hotel.
Jaisalmer fort is a like a kingdom in a fort itself! Its so huge that there are almost 10000 people residing in the fort, 30-40 hotels, 7-8 restaurants and just small part of fort is open for public for sight seeing! We hired a guide who was very informative. He went an extra mile and also escorted us to the Gadisar Lake and Rajputana Hotel.
Since we were heading to Mumbai on same night, we reached Gadisar lake after it was dark. We couldnt figure out what it was like but the gate and all were so intricate that we were tempted to stay back and enjoy the view in daytime.
We reached Mumbai at 7pm in evening after we started at 11pm previous night. We only stopped in between for pee, poo's and food!
