Udaipur

Udaipur was founded by Maharana Udai Singh II after Chittorgarh fell, and it was sited for water — Lake Pichola was already there, dammed in the fourteenth century, and the city grew along its edge. The City Palace is not one building but eleven, added by successive rulers over four hundred years and joined into a single façade almost a quarter of a kilometre long.

The lake sets the pace. Jag Niwas, the eighteenth-century island residence now run as a hotel, is the postcard; Jag Mandir, the older island south of it, is quieter and open to boats. Jagdish Temple in 1651 raised a three-storey Indo-Aryan shrine right in the bazaar, and it is still in daily use rather than on a ticket.

When to go. October to March, with December and January cool enough to walk the old city at midday. Kumbhalgarh — the fifteenth-century fort with a wall thirty-six kilometres long, listed by UNESCO — is a long day trip north and best done in the same window.