Udaipur, India
Kamal brings us up to the gates of the City Palace. We are given thorough security checks and sweep up the huge drive before being met at a lakeside verandah by beautifully dressed women. Hot towels and bindis again. Our bags are invisibly whisked away and we are escorted down to where our boat awaits. Also crossing with us are a young Russian couple; they have a cold arrogance and a taste for money, probably children of some corrupt oligarch. Fortunately wealth can't buy beauty and they're both shockers in the looks department so we ensure they don't invade our photos.
We embark through iron pagodas and alight at the Lake Palace's elegant jetty where we are whisked up the red carpet by a wonderfully attired doorman with a fabulous parasol. As we enter the hotel rose petals are showered upon us from on high and we are given cool glasses of rose water and orange juice to drink. A handsome man in a fine embroidered salwar kameez gives us a tour of the hotel, showing us the beautiful courtyard lake of lillies, the fabulous restaurants, the spa and the bar, named Sea of Nectar.
In our room he finally checks us in. We were expecting some grand suite but it's actually quite small, and styled like a French sitting room, with window seats so we can gaze across the lake to the City Palace. The TV which has automatically sprung to life as we enter is showing the wonders of the Lake Palace Hotel and some of the bedrooms are just jaw dropping with private jacuzzis on balconies and huge marble bathrooms. Gorgeous, but at four grand a night we'll have to pass!!
Coman, with his appetite fully returned and stomach back to normal, asks for some toast, but like a fool I insist we have to have a glass of champagne to toast our stay here at what, apparently, has been voted many times as one of the Top 10 hotels in the world. Or so the literature tells us. It's certainly the most spectacular I've stayed in.
Room service arrives; deeply elegant gold embroidered table cloths and symmetrical triangles of toast, with a white-gloved attendant to pour perfectly chilled glasses of Moet. Ah this is the life... I sign the bill. £60!!! For two glasses of fizz and a couple of rounds of white bread. Bloody hell. What was I thinking?! We raise our glasses in thanks to everyone who so kindly gave us donations for our wedding, and contributed to our Trailfinders list. As you can see, we've put your generosity to damn good use!!
Once we're over the shock of the fizz we go for a snoop around to check out the pools and the spectacular pagodas almost suspended over the lake which have two person jacuzzis in, open 24 hours for those special moments. As we return to the room, fireworks explode in the sky above us. No idea why but it's a nice touch.
We decide to take dinner on the rooftop restaurant under a starlit sky, with the Milky Way bright above us. I don my new shirt fresh from Jaipur but Coman is nervous about mosquitos from the lake, so rather than aftershave we wear 50% deet. I notice later he's even tucked his trousers into his socks like a cycling professor, to guard against the little bastards. God knows what he'll do in Goa.
The rooftop restaurant is called Bhairo, meaning 'gush of wind' and looks beautiful. We are seated at a table looking out from the hotel to the City Palace and a charcoal brazier is lit beside us to keep us toasty in the chilly evening air. Our menu is presented along with torches, as by this time the darkness of night means actually seeing what we're meant to be eating is going to be a struggle. Instead of haute cuisine Indian style the entire menu is European, obviously the height of sophistication in India but nothing we wouldn't eat at home.
Prices are also akin to those in the more top-end restaurants of Mayfair so, having had the most expensive drink of our lives on arrival, we scrutinise the menu making choices from economy rather than gastronomy. And none more so than with the drinks. Even in the half-light I notice Coman blanche when he picks up the wine list. He passes it over in silence and at first glance I nearly drop the damn thing. The majority of wines are priced in the hundreds and thousands. Not rupees, but pounds! Buried near the back is an Italian Soave for £40. We'll have that please. It tastes like the cheap plonk the corner shop has on offer for £2.99.
To make up for the royal fleecing we are told the chef has prepared us a complimentary starter. The chef is obviously a comedian as we are presented with a miniature cocktail stick skewering a tiny cube of apple and half a mint leaf on an enormous plate.
Thankfully Coman has already ordered a pear, gorgonzola and pecan nut appetiser and I tuck into a tomato and prawn soup. Lemon and mint sorbet palette cleansers follow in frosted glasses. By this point it's difficult to see anything and we have to use the camera flash just to appreciate how the food looks.
It's also difficult to appreciate just how good-looking the staff at the Lake Palace are. The waiters are drop dead gorgeous, and the women, dressed in fabulous blue saris, could all be models. The job application process must be rigorous. Our waiter tells us, over the gently strummed acoustic guitar classics which serenade us, that the view we're currently looking at (thankfully illuminated by city lights) is the 19th best view in the world and that Udaipur has been recently voted the No.1 best city in the world according to the Travellers Awards. He asks if there's anything they can do to improve on their service. We ask him for a better view. He looks confused.
Our main courses arrive on plates covered with silver domes. They are whipped off with a flourish, accompanied by an enthusiastic "Voila!" We are wished "Bon appetit" in an Indian accent and we peer through the gloom at what we have ordered. Coman has tortellini stuffed with broccoli and bell pepper while I've plumped for the classic chicken in parma ham stuffed with Swiss cheese. Oh, and there seem to be gherkins. Hmmmm. They quickly get tossed into the lake. But even though this food wouldn't trouble the top class establishments in London, New York or Paris, despite the ridiculously metropolitan price tag, it's nice not to have another Indian dish for once.
We finish with a Belgian chocolate soufflé and cinnammon gelato in a brandy snap, washed down with an 'Octopussy' cocktail. That Bond film had many scenes filmed right here in this palace and on the lake, so in honour of our dashing hero it seems rude not to quaff the signature drink. Unfortunately the mixture of vodka and jasmine tastes a lot like soap so I'm not surprised the following morning when our guide tells us that 95% of the guests who've tried it tell him they hated it. Have none of them filled in a feedback form?!?!
We retire to our salle de chambre and sleep soundly, awaking to a powerful dawn chorus outside our windows, as birds swoop over the lake. Not particularly peckish we wander down to breakfast which is taken in Jharoka, a palatial arched room with views of the central lily ponds and the lake. It's a little overwhelming; service is constant, and verging on obsequious, even down to the restaurant manager giving us his card and asking if we would like to tell him our favourite foods so he can prepare them, any time of day or night. Above us sits a flautist in a pagoda, filling the morning air with ancient melodies.
Waiter after waiter approaches our table proffering croissants, pastries, muffins, soy banana smoothies, fresh guava juices, eggs in any of 20 different ways, lassis of every conceivable flavour, porridge laced with finest honeys, various Indian delicacies, cheeses, selections of cold meat, mango yoghurts, huge plungers of coffee, five different varieties of toast, cereals, huge plates of bacon and much, much more. Even a packed lunch for the day ahead is offered. Being more used to the help-yourself-buffet breakfast, and mindful of the severe poverty we have seen, we eventually have to ask them to stop. Just one more wafer thin dhosa sir? No, we'll explode...
After we're well and truly fed our launch arrives to take us across to the city. The parasol-bearing attendant takes us back down the red carpet and we cross the lake in style, a boat ride for two into the morning sun to meet our guide.
And when we return later we are shown to a private balcony for a spot of sunbathing. It's probably to shield the other guests from our enormous white bellies on display as we've both piled on the pounds having been ferried everywhere for almost ten days and eating more curries in a week than we normally do in a year. Coman however is thrilled to have since dropped a dress size on yesterday's diarrhoea diet.
Later when sipping cocktails by the pool I suck in hard and thankfully we pass for the beautiful people allowed in such rarified environs and so our jacuzzi and swim passes without us being evicted from the grand pavilions. We'll be crying when we have to leave.
