India
Udaipur
White marble palaces float on still lakes while the Aravalli hills burn copper at sunset.
The palace appears to float. White marble catching the last light, reflected in Lake Pichola's still surface, the Lake Palace looks like an architect's dream that solidified on water. Behind it the Aravalli Hills burn copper, then violet, then ink-black as the sun goes.
Udaipur is built around the artificial lakes of the Mewar dynasty, Lake Pichola at their centre. The City Palace, begun by Maharana Udai Singh II in 1553 and extended by successive kings for four centuries, stretches nearly 250 metres along the shore — the largest palace complex in Rajasthan, its museum galleries open to the public since 1969. Out on the water sit the Lake Palace on Jag Niwas island, reached only by boat, and Jag Mandir with its stone elephants, while the old city climbs the hillside behind in narrow whitewashed lanes.
Solo
Take the first boat across Pichola, do the museum galleries slowly, and finish on any rooftop facing the water.
Couple
Book the sunset boat past Jag Mandir, then a rooftop dinner while the palace lights arrive.
- The Lake Palace rides its island so low that the marble seems to float — boats are the only approach.
- Four hundred years of Mewar builders made one continuous palace, and its galleries have been public since 1969.
- Rooftop restaurants serve thalis as the palace walls catch the last orange light off the water.
- The Aravalli sunset sequence — copper, violet, ink — takes about twenty minutes, and the lakes replay it.
Dal baati churma — baked wheat dumplings broken into ghee-drenched lentils — is the Rajasthani staple done properly here.
Rabodi ki sabzi — sun-dried maize and buttermilk in spiced gravy — is the Mewari dish worth asking for.
Siglufjörður
Iceland
A brightly coloured herring town tucked into a mountain-ringed fjord at the world's edge.
Albi
France
A cathedral built like a red-brick fortress after the Cathar crusade, dwarfing the town beneath it.
Estremoz
Portugal
A town where even the cobbles are marble, its market mornings spilling down pink-veined slopes.
Lavenham
England
Crooked medieval timber frames leaning at angles that defy both gravity and planning law.
Tharangambadi
India
A decaying Danish fort battered by the Coromandel tide smelling of ozone and forgotten empires.
Dzongu
India
A protected indigenous reserve where hot springs bubble beneath the sheer ice wall of Kanchenjunga.
Ziro Valley
India
Fish swim between rice stalks in a pine-ringed valley farmed by the Apatani for centuries.