Probably the Most Romantic Dinner?

As we had been told but chose not to believe, Lake Pichola is a seasonal lake that dries out in the summer until the monsoons bring enough water to fill the lake to its banks. As a result, what is left is a dried lake bed used by grazing livestock and as makeshift cricket pitches. In addition, the palaces located within the lake that appear to be islands are merely building out in the middle of nowhere. The most famous of these palaces is the Lake Palace, which the Taj Hotel Group has turned into a luxury hotel. One side of the palace appeared to have some sort of channel dredged so that the guests could still be ferried by boat, though I'm sure it loses a bit of its mystique when you could just as easily approach the hotel by foot from any other direction.

It was from the "watered" side that we had our view from dinner at the Sunset Terrace located within the City Palace grounds in Udaipur. I believe this was the first time that both Lindsay and I had elected to order Indian food from a menu that included continental selections. Said another way, I believe it was the first time that Lindsay had ordered Indian food from a menu that included continental selections. Midway through our non-veg kebab platter and dal makhani, the sun had set and the city took upon a floodlit glow. It was also around this time that we noticed a flock of birds flying out in front of the palace from the south to the north. They kept coming and coming and coming. It started to get a little noisy and as Lindsay looked a little closer she remarked, "Um, those aren't birds...those are bats!" Sure enough, we were witnessing the nightly awakening of the colony of bats that call the exterior of the palace home. I'm not one to get weird around animals, but suffice to say that that many bats was enough to trump the view of the Lake Palace and the sunset behind the Aravelli Mountains as the most memorable part of the evening.