Udaipur: City of lakes, light and romance

Sitting on a roof terrace above Lake Pinchola, looking at the long row of turreted, latticed palaces and listening to the regular thump, thump of women bashing their laundry on the ghats below, Udaipur got under my skin within minutes of arrival.

This romantic Rajasthani city has been given more nicknames over the centuries than the Pope, and all of them nicer.

Flowering in the midst of a desert landscape, this oasis was very different only a few years ago as a drought saw both Pinchola and Jaisander lakes dry up.

Today you can sit beneath scalloped arches and watch the sun disappear over lushly irrigated cropland and layers of misty blue hills.

Outside the door of the Panorama guesthouse a young lad with a piece of bread in his hand is being chased around the yard by a small cow.

In the massive front courtyard of the City Palace elephants once lined up for inspection and the steps are built at a level for the king to mount either his horse or his elephant.

Our guide proves to be a fund of dreadful jokes and unlikely but colourful tales of the Maharanas of Udaipur.

The purity of the creamy stone palace is said to reflect the purity of the Mewar kingdom, which is the only Indian state to have maintained its independance throughout the rule of the Mughals.

This Rajput dynasty refused to intermarry with the princes of Delhi, and remained autonomous right up until shortly after partition.

The Maharana is now more of a hotelier than a monarch but the architectural and artistic glories of his ancestors are still there for all to see.

The palace is a maze of passages and courtyards, many intricately decorated with carvings covered by gold and silver leaf.

Incredibly delicate paintings coloured with zinc, lapis, malachite and carbon mixed with gum arabic show elaborate court scenes, tiger hunts and great battles against the Mughals.

Each tiny face has different features and expressions and I watch a restorer painting the feathers on to the tail of a peacock with fine squirrel tail hair brushes.

Colour is important in Indian culture and in one shady courtyard, the king and queen once flew through the air on giant swings above a tank throwing coloured powder and water at each other.

A lake cruise is an essential element of any visit to Udaipur, travelling along the base of the palaces and their shorefront gardens filled with creeping vines and domed follies.

It is only from the water that you can see the full magnificence of the largest palace complex in Rajasthan.

Udaipur is a sunset city and the Monsoon Palace is the place to see it. Built in 1880 atop a small mountain to the west of town, this romantically dilapidated palace boasts spectacular views over the whole valley.

The night air is cool but the sun's warmth still rises from the stone and its sinking rays catch with gold the city palace and the lake palace on Jagmindir island.

The rickshaw drivers mount an unofficial racing challenge on the way down the steep zigzagging road - overtaking wildly on the exhilarating coast down the mountain.

Perhaps not quite as wildly as James Bond in Octopussy, which was filmed here in 1982.

As we return to town a wedding celebration is starting up and a procession of brightly dressed ladies pass through the archways beside the ghats, carrying silver pots of flowers and hairy coconuts on their heads.

Under starlight the palaces of Udaipur are lit artificially and an unseen man with a booming voice is wandering the narrow streets of the neighbourhood calling out "Shiva, Shiva".

He passes near the guesthouse and then moves away and I'm not sure whether he's calling out to his god or looking for his cow.

Natasha von Geldern