Udaipur → Kumbhalgarh → Narlai

On this day

What you are looking at, roughly in the order the day meets it.

• Climbing the Aravalli — two hours of winding road up from Udaipur: terraced plots of wheat and mustard behind dry-stone walls, goatherds, and villages where the women’s odhnis (shawls) are the brightest objects in the landscape.

• Kelwara — the small bazaar town in the valley below the fort, its lanes barely wider than the car — and notice what you cannot see from it: the fort. Thirty-six kilometres of wall sit just above the town, hidden by the folds of the hills until nearly the last bend of the climb.

• Kumbhalgarh Fort — Rana Kumbha’s 15th-century fortress with its 36 km wall, the longest in the world after the Great Wall; birthplace of Maharana Pratap; taken once in 700 years, and only by poisoning the water supply.

  The story: Kumbhalgarh →

• The wall from Badal Mahal — the “cloud palace” at the summit is the payoff climb: from its roof the wall can be followed with the eye as it rides the ridgelines, and on a clear day the view runs to the Thar side of the range. The rampart top is broad enough, the saying goes, to ride eight horses abreast.

• The 360 temples inside — the wall encloses a whole sacred landscape: hundreds of Hindu and Jain shrines, many older than the fort itself, scattered through scrub inside the ramparts.

• Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary — the fort sits inside a sanctuary that holds leopard, wolf, sloth bear and grey langur; the descent road skirts it, and langurs on the parapets are near-certain.

• Ranakpur — thirty-three kilometres from the fort, in a wooded valley on the far side of the ridge: the Chaumukha temple, the greatest Jain building in India. It is a hall of 1,444 marble pillars, carved so that no two are alike, holding up twenty-nine domed halls around a four-faced image of Adinath — and because the marble is translucent and the courts are open, the light inside changes hour by hour. Built under the same Rana Kumbha who was raising the fort down the road, on land he granted the merchant Dharna Shah.

  Only if the driver agrees to the detour. Non-Jains are admitted from noon to 17:00; shoes and all leather (belts, bags, camera straps) are left at the door.

  The story: Kumbhalgarh →

• Down to the Godwar plain — the afternoon hour drops out of the hills through a pass onto flat farming country — the abrupt edge where the Aravalli ends is the day’s geography lesson in one view.

• Narlai and Elephant Hill — a farming village beneath a single granite dome, the 17th-century hunting lodge of the Jodhpur royals at its centre. Steps cut into the rock lead up ~350 steps to a white marble elephant and a view over the whole plain; the lodge also does a lantern-lit dinner in an old stepwell — worth asking about.

Where to eat

Breakfast is at the hotel. Researched picks, not a directory — the small print names who recommends each. Names link to Google Maps.

No lunch is scheduled — the day runs fort to lodge. If the driver takes the Ranakpur detour, the temple canteen below is the lunch; if not, it is a dhaba on the Kelwara road.