Lake Pichola

Where it sits. Lake Pichola lies in the middle of Udaipur, in the southern Aravallis, an artificial sheet of water roughly four kilometres long and three wide with the City Palace along its eastern shore and hills closing the western side. It is one link in a chain of connected lakes — Swaroop Sagar and Fateh Sagar to the north, Doodh Talai to the south — created over centuries by damming seasonal streams for drinking water and irrigation. Four islands sit in it, and it is the islands, more than the water, that made Udaipur famous.

The story behind it. The lake was created in 1362 by a Banjara grain trader remembered as Pichhu, who dammed the stream to serve his caravans; the village of Picholi gave it its name. When Maharana Udai Singh II founded Udaipur in 1559 after abandoning Chittor, he enlarged the dam and made the lake the organising element of the new capital. The palaces followed. Jag Mandir, on the southern island, was built through the early seventeenth century and sheltered the Mughal prince Khurram — later Shah Jahan — during his revolt against his father in the 1620s, a stay that is said to have influenced his later architecture. Jag Niwas, on the second island, was built between 1743 and 1746 by Maharana Jagat Singh II as a summer palace; it became a hotel in 1963 and has been run by the Taj group since 1971. Mohan Mandir, a small pavilion, is where the ruler watched the Gangaur festival; Arsi Vilas was an ammunition store that doubled as a sunset pavilion and is now a bird refuge holding cormorants, egrets, terns and kingfishers.

On screen. Pichola is the single most internationally recognised body of water in Indian cinema, and the reason is Octopussy (1983). The thirteenth James Bond film used the Lake Palace on Jag Niwas as the floating palace of Maud Adams's title character, Jag Mandir for exterior shots of the same household, the Shiv Niwas wing of the City Palace as Bond's own hotel, and the Monsoon Palace at Sajjangarh, on the ridge west of the lake, as the residence of the villain Kamal Khan. The film's afterlife in Udaipur is a genuine curiosity: rooftop restaurants around the ghats have screened it nightly for decades, and it is still playing somewhere in the old city most evenings. Hindi cinema got there first. Vijay Anand's Guide (1965) shot around the City Palace complex, the Lake Palace, Jag Mandir and the Udaipur ghats. Karan Johar's Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (2013) staged its long wedding sequence on the lake — at the Oberoi Udaivilas on the western shore, with the Kabira material and part of the celebration on and around Jag Mandir.

What you actually see today. Boats leave from Rameshwar Ghat inside the City Palace complex and run a circuit of the islands, with an optional stop at Jag Mandir; the last departure before sunset is the one people queue for. From the water the palace facade shows its full 244-metre length, which is invisible from the street. The western shore, around Ambrai and Hanuman ghats in the Amet Haveli quarter, is where the classic photograph of the palace and the lake is taken, and where the old city's cafés cluster. Gangaur Ghat, on the eastern side, is the everyday lake: bathers, laundry, and in spring the Mewar festival processions. The lake is entirely rain-fed, so its level swings sharply; in severe drought years in the early 2000s it dried to mud, and boat operations stopped altogether. After a strong monsoon the opposite happens and water spills over the Daiji and Swaroop Sagar bridges, which the city treats as an event worth going out to watch.

Getting there and timing. Udaipur's Maharana Pratap Airport is 22 kilometres east, with flights from Delhi and Mumbai, and trains run overnight from Delhi and Jaipur. The lakeside old city is compact and best walked. September to March is the season, with the lake at its fullest just after the monsoon and the light at its best in the hour before sunset. April to June is hot but reliably clear. Ghats and boat jetties involve steps down to the water and the old-city lanes are narrow and stepped, so mobility is a real consideration; the boat itself is boarded from a fixed jetty.