Ironically, after waxing lyrical about how wonderful and peaceful this hotel is we've been bombarded with noise from military jets - boy are they noisy - they almost make the earth shake when they pass overhead
I'm sitting by the lovely lily pond looking at the greenery and thinking beautiful thoughts (trying to ignore jets is nigh on impossible though)
On the 26th January 2018 India will celebrate its 69th Republic Day. Independence Day celebrates the gaining of its freedom from British Rule but Republic Day commemorates the forming of its own constitution.
Officially it is celebrated each year in the National capital of New Delhi but there its a Public Holiday throughout India and there are celebrations and parades throughout the country. We had noticed how much military presence there is around this hotel - army, airforce etc., barracks everywhere. Apparently jet fighter planes from around the country are here practicing for the big event and boy, don't we know it. They are flying over approx every 10 minutes - yesterday it was all day up till around 9pm.
This Republic Day celebration is particularly important as it will be attended by the heads of State from all 10 nations forming the ASEAN countries (Association of South East Asian Nations) which is celebrating 50 years since their formation and India will be celebrating its partnership with them of 25 years.
As the hotel gardens are so leafy we can't actually see the planes but on our morning walk I took this photo - its not very clear as the jet fighter was a long way off but David read that most of these jets were bought from Russia
Weird looking thing
Anyway, we decided to try once more to find the palace our hotel manager had directed us to yesterday.
Next door to the hotel is a small school and we were fascinated by the kids who were formed into teams/groups and participating in a dance ritual with sticks and bells/musical instruments. Some of the kids who weren't involved spotted us and came to the gates to tell us they were practicing a special 26 January dance routine ... before long, chaos reigned as the kids started breaking ranks and coming over to talk to us so we decided to beat a hasty retreat before we/they got into trouble
I think yesterday we were deterred/diverted from our route by all the military building/barracks - we assumed we weren't allowed to go past them.
A few sights along the way
It wasn't a very interesting walk, but the streets are very well maintained and clean and lined with bougainvillea
and after around 45 minutes we spotted our target, which was just as well as the last stretch was uphill and the sun was quite fierce
Umaid Bhawan Palace is one of the world's largest private residences. Its named after Maharaja Umaid Singh, grandfather of the present owner. It stands on Chittar Hill, has 347 rooms and is the main residence of the Jodhpur royal family. A part of the palace also houses a museum which was interesting to walk around. Its set in 26 acres of land, 15 of which are gardens. A large section of the palace has been taken over by the Taj hotel group and run as a hotel (which has won the accolade of Best Hotel in the World and where Liz Hurley got married). We weren't allowed to enter that section - actually we (as Brits) could probably have bluffed our way in but we weren't that bothered.
Umaid Singh started building it in the 1920s and it was finished in 1943. One of the major reasons for building it (besides having the money to do so) was to provide work for the local communities during a time of famine. He had to build a railway line to bring in the sandstone, there were apparently half a million donkey loads of soil transported and 100 wagon loads of marble, a million metres of steel conduits, copper and lead wire weighing 200 tons and 2 and a half million quintals of ice (they floated the marble/sandstone on layers of ice to manouevre it into place then let is settle as the ice melted ... clever stuff! (I think a quintal is 100kgs) ... you may have worked out that I photographed a poster giving all these facts and figures ... but the scale of the place is pretty amazing..
What I found quite strange is that the palace was designed by a Brit - Henry Vaughan Lanchester and many of the decorations were painted by a Polish artist who was fleeing from the Germans - they're painted in traditional Indian style.
As well as providing work for the locals suffering from 3 years of drought and famine, Umaid Singh built up a very strong polo team. He introduced a scheme for extending primary education, established state pensions and provident fund for state employees. He loved aviation (but wasn't permitted to fly as a wartime pilot)
He only spent about 3 years at the palace before dying and there are stories of a jinx in the family. His Grandfather died aged 21, his father died aged 20. Umaid died aged 43 (or 44 depending which version you read) and Umaid's son died in a plane crash aged 29 years.
I've been trying to find out online how Umaid died but haven't had any success ... seems to be a bit of news black-out (or is that just my conspiracy theory brain kicking in)
As the sun was very hot we took a tuk tuk back to the hotel where we've been chilling with cold beers ever since. We've had no jets flying over for the last 90 minutes so perhaps they've run out of fuel, or got bored!
Tomorrow will be a long day of travelling (or at least hanging around airports). We will fly from Jodhpur to Mumbai then take a domestic flight from Mumbai to Cochin (in the South) where we will spend the night. Our driver Joshy will meet us on Thursday morning to start our tour of the South.
So our final 'relaxing' shots at this lovely hotel ... on our balcony (couldn't work out how to do a selfie so had to take 2 separate pics)
I'm sitting by the lovely lily pond looking at the greenery and thinking beautiful thoughts (trying to ignore jets is nigh on impossible though)
On the 26th January 2018 India will celebrate its 69th Republic Day. Independence Day celebrates the gaining of its freedom from British Rule but Republic Day commemorates the forming of its own constitution.
Officially it is celebrated each year in the National capital of New Delhi but there its a Public Holiday throughout India and there are celebrations and parades throughout the country. We had noticed how much military presence there is around this hotel - army, airforce etc., barracks everywhere. Apparently jet fighter planes from around the country are here practicing for the big event and boy, don't we know it. They are flying over approx every 10 minutes - yesterday it was all day up till around 9pm.
This Republic Day celebration is particularly important as it will be attended by the heads of State from all 10 nations forming the ASEAN countries (Association of South East Asian Nations) which is celebrating 50 years since their formation and India will be celebrating its partnership with them of 25 years.
As the hotel gardens are so leafy we can't actually see the planes but on our morning walk I took this photo - its not very clear as the jet fighter was a long way off but David read that most of these jets were bought from Russia
Weird looking thing
Anyway, we decided to try once more to find the palace our hotel manager had directed us to yesterday.
Next door to the hotel is a small school and we were fascinated by the kids who were formed into teams/groups and participating in a dance ritual with sticks and bells/musical instruments. Some of the kids who weren't involved spotted us and came to the gates to tell us they were practicing a special 26 January dance routine ... before long, chaos reigned as the kids started breaking ranks and coming over to talk to us so we decided to beat a hasty retreat before we/they got into trouble
I think yesterday we were deterred/diverted from our route by all the military building/barracks - we assumed we weren't allowed to go past them.
A few sights along the way
It wasn't a very interesting walk, but the streets are very well maintained and clean and lined with bougainvillea
and after around 45 minutes we spotted our target, which was just as well as the last stretch was uphill and the sun was quite fierce
Umaid Bhawan Palace is one of the world's largest private residences. Its named after Maharaja Umaid Singh, grandfather of the present owner. It stands on Chittar Hill, has 347 rooms and is the main residence of the Jodhpur royal family. A part of the palace also houses a museum which was interesting to walk around. Its set in 26 acres of land, 15 of which are gardens. A large section of the palace has been taken over by the Taj hotel group and run as a hotel (which has won the accolade of Best Hotel in the World and where Liz Hurley got married). We weren't allowed to enter that section - actually we (as Brits) could probably have bluffed our way in but we weren't that bothered.
Umaid Singh started building it in the 1920s and it was finished in 1943. One of the major reasons for building it (besides having the money to do so) was to provide work for the local communities during a time of famine. He had to build a railway line to bring in the sandstone, there were apparently half a million donkey loads of soil transported and 100 wagon loads of marble, a million metres of steel conduits, copper and lead wire weighing 200 tons and 2 and a half million quintals of ice (they floated the marble/sandstone on layers of ice to manouevre it into place then let is settle as the ice melted ... clever stuff! (I think a quintal is 100kgs) ... you may have worked out that I photographed a poster giving all these facts and figures ... but the scale of the place is pretty amazing..
What I found quite strange is that the palace was designed by a Brit - Henry Vaughan Lanchester and many of the decorations were painted by a Polish artist who was fleeing from the Germans - they're painted in traditional Indian style.
As well as providing work for the locals suffering from 3 years of drought and famine, Umaid Singh built up a very strong polo team. He introduced a scheme for extending primary education, established state pensions and provident fund for state employees. He loved aviation (but wasn't permitted to fly as a wartime pilot)
He only spent about 3 years at the palace before dying and there are stories of a jinx in the family. His Grandfather died aged 21, his father died aged 20. Umaid died aged 43 (or 44 depending which version you read) and Umaid's son died in a plane crash aged 29 years.
I've been trying to find out online how Umaid died but haven't had any success ... seems to be a bit of news black-out (or is that just my conspiracy theory brain kicking in)
As the sun was very hot we took a tuk tuk back to the hotel where we've been chilling with cold beers ever since. We've had no jets flying over for the last 90 minutes so perhaps they've run out of fuel, or got bored!
Tomorrow will be a long day of travelling (or at least hanging around airports). We will fly from Jodhpur to Mumbai then take a domestic flight from Mumbai to Cochin (in the South) where we will spend the night. Our driver Joshy will meet us on Thursday morning to start our tour of the South.
So our final 'relaxing' shots at this lovely hotel ... on our balcony (couldn't work out how to do a selfie so had to take 2 separate pics)
