Rajasthan Royal

Why Rajasthan Royal works

Rajasthan's royal circuit runs through three cities founded by three different Rajput dynasties. Jaipur, the state capital and largest city, with a population of 3.1 million as of 2011, was founded in 1727 by Sawai Jai Singh II, the Kachhwaha Rajput ruler of Amer, who shifted his capital to accommodate a growing population and a shortage of water at Amer, 11 kilometres away. Udaipur, about 415 kilometres south of Jaipur, is the historic capital of the kingdom of Mewar, founded in 1559 by Udai Singh II of the Sisodia clan when he moved his capital from Chittorgarh after it was besieged by Akbar. Jaisalmer, in the heart of the Thar Desert 575 kilometres west of Jaipur, is the historic capital of the kingdom of Jaisalmer, founded in 1156 by Rawal Jaisal of the Bhati clan of Rajputs, whose dominions had earlier stretched as far as Ghazni in modern Afghanistan before being pushed south by repeated invasions from Central Asia.

Jaipur is among the earliest planned cities of modern India, laid out from 1726 under the architectural guidance of Vidyadhar Bhattacharya according to the principles of Vastu Shastra and Shilpa Shastra, with three gates facing east, west, and north — Suraj Pol, the sun gate; Chand Pol, the moon gate; and a northern gate facing the ancestral capital of Amer — and streets 34 metres wide dividing the city into six sectors around a central palace quarter that encloses the Hawa Mahal. During the rule of Sawai Ram Singh II the city was painted pink to welcome Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1876, and many of its avenues remain that colour today, giving Jaipur its epithet, the Pink City.

Udaipur is known as the City of Lakes, surrounded by five major artificial lakes that Maharana Udai Singh II built his new capital around after choosing the site near Lake Pichola in 1559; the connected lake system today spans upper catchment lakes, city lakes including Pichola, Fateh Sagar, and Swaroop Sagar, and a downstream lake, drawing on the river Berach and its tributaries within the wider Banas and Gangetic river system. The city became one of India's first two cities accredited under the Ramsar Convention's Wetland City Accreditation Scheme, reflecting how central its lakes remain to drinking water, agriculture, and tourism-linked employment alike. Udaipur remained the Mewar capital until 1818, when the kingdom became a British princely state, and the region joined the new state of Rajasthan after India's 1947 independence.

Jaisalmer, nicknamed the Golden City, stands on a ridge of yellowish sandstone crowned by Jaisalmer Fort, a UNESCO World Heritage Site supported by 99 bastions that still houses a royal palace, several ornately carved Jain temples, and roughly a quarter of the town's population within its walls. Built in 1156 by Jaisal himself and known locally as Trikoot Garh, the fort's sandstone walls appear pale yellow by day and turn a darker gold at sunset, an effect that inspired Satyajit Ray's detective novel and film Sonar Kella, The Golden Fortress. Both the fort and the town below are built largely of finely sculpted yellow sandstone, and the town, home to about 78,000 people, was ranked ninth on Booking.com's list of the world's most welcoming cities — the only Indian city to appear on it.

Together the three cities trace the arc of Rajasthan's royal history from a desert trading capital in the twelfth century to a lake-bound Mewar seat in the sixteenth and a purpose-planned Kachhwaha capital in the eighteenth. Jaipur today forms part of India's Western Golden Triangle tourist circuit alongside Delhi and Agra and serves as the practical gateway to the state's other royal cities, including Jodhpur, Bikaner, Bundi, Kota, and Mount Abu, while Udaipur and Jaisalmer each retain the physical fabric — lakes ringed by palaces, and a living fort city rising from the desert — that made them capitals in the first place.

• Jaipur — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Udaipur — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Jaisalmer — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text adapted from the linked articles under CC BY-SA 4.0; edited for length.

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