The Lakeless Palace Hotel
When Meg and I began the trip, we realized that as romantic as our round-the-world journey to exotic places sounded, there was a very real chance that a year of spending every almost every waking hour together, sharing rooms with a squat toilet and no door and wearing the same underwear repeatedly might eventually start to douse the fiery flames of passion between us. So we decided to schedule occasional "date nights" where we'd break our normal routine and tight budget and splurge for the right spectacular special occasion.
The Taj Lake Palace Hotel in Udaipur, India was the perfect 1st date night. Google it and you'll see why. A white-marble former Maharajah's palace built to appear as if it floated on a lake in India's most fairy-tale city. Five-star accommodations, a boat-trip straight to check-in, the former site of a 007 movie (Octopussy, side note: would Ashcroft ever let that movie title exist now? Didn't think so), everything was in place for our first date night on the road. We made our reservation, reconciled ourself to spending more on one night there than we would our next 2 months of lodging combined, and we were psyched! We reserved a "deluxe lake view" room and bought fancy Indian clothes for the occasion. Our anticipation grew as we got off the bus from Ahmedabad. As we loaded our bags into a rickshaw to make our way to the lake, we were bubbling with excitement. And as we walked up the steps to get our 1st view of the lake and the Lake Palace, we were sooooo ready.
But as we looked across to the Lake Palace, we realized there was a slight problem. There was no lake! Just a big huge field of grass surrounding a forlorn white palace stuck in the ground. Kids were playing cricket next to it. Camels and elephants were wandering around it. Cars were driving up to it. But no water anywhere.
Apparently the monsoon has not been good to Udaipur the last few years, and in 2003, the lake finally dried up. The Lake Palace Hotel apparently hasn't quite gotten around to updating its website, lowering its prices, or renaming its "lake-view rooms", but an extremely angry phone call from us led to a fun exchange:
Rahul: Uh, yes, I'd like to cancel my reservation for the lake-view room at the Lake Palace Hotel?
Operator: May I ask why sir?
Rahul: Uh, there's no lake.
Operator: Yes sir, that is very true sir. I will cancel your reservation.
Now we're staying at a pretty little guest house that costs $2/night. Udaipur's still a gorgeous place, and soon we'll start a four day journey into the Ghar desert on camelback. Life is good. But the search for date night continues.
--rahul
The Taj Lake Palace Hotel in Udaipur, India was the perfect 1st date night. Google it and you'll see why. A white-marble former Maharajah's palace built to appear as if it floated on a lake in India's most fairy-tale city. Five-star accommodations, a boat-trip straight to check-in, the former site of a 007 movie (Octopussy, side note: would Ashcroft ever let that movie title exist now? Didn't think so), everything was in place for our first date night on the road. We made our reservation, reconciled ourself to spending more on one night there than we would our next 2 months of lodging combined, and we were psyched! We reserved a "deluxe lake view" room and bought fancy Indian clothes for the occasion. Our anticipation grew as we got off the bus from Ahmedabad. As we loaded our bags into a rickshaw to make our way to the lake, we were bubbling with excitement. And as we walked up the steps to get our 1st view of the lake and the Lake Palace, we were sooooo ready.
But as we looked across to the Lake Palace, we realized there was a slight problem. There was no lake! Just a big huge field of grass surrounding a forlorn white palace stuck in the ground. Kids were playing cricket next to it. Camels and elephants were wandering around it. Cars were driving up to it. But no water anywhere.
Apparently the monsoon has not been good to Udaipur the last few years, and in 2003, the lake finally dried up. The Lake Palace Hotel apparently hasn't quite gotten around to updating its website, lowering its prices, or renaming its "lake-view rooms", but an extremely angry phone call from us led to a fun exchange:
Rahul: Uh, yes, I'd like to cancel my reservation for the lake-view room at the Lake Palace Hotel?
Operator: May I ask why sir?
Rahul: Uh, there's no lake.
Operator: Yes sir, that is very true sir. I will cancel your reservation.
Now we're staying at a pretty little guest house that costs $2/night. Udaipur's still a gorgeous place, and soon we'll start a four day journey into the Ghar desert on camelback. Life is good. But the search for date night continues.
--rahul
posted by Meghul at 6:01 AM
2 Comments:
Well done on a nice blog meg and rahul. I was looking for information on hotel nice france and came across your post The Lakeless Palace Hotel - not quite what I was looking for related to hotel nice france but interesting all the same!
I am a hopeless romantic out looking for some information on picture romantic. meg and rahul, looks like you have put some work into your site. Well, it is about time I go back to looking for more information. Hey, thanks for the read.
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