Ram Pratap Palace Udaipur

Ram Pratap Palace is a beautiful hotel in Udaipur, situated right across Fateh Sagar Lake, with an amazing view of the lake and the backdrop of Aravali hills beyond the lake. (Actually, it is much better than what you would perceive looking at the hotel pictures on it’s website.

When we planned our recent trip to Jaipur and Udaipur, one of the first daunting tasks was to look for the right place to stay. Our relatives live in Jaipur. They generously invited us to stay with them. Next we started scanning through the hotels and homestay options of Udaipur. 

Which area to stay in Udaipur ?

As we were heading to the city of lakes, the obvious choice was to be able to stay as close to the lakes. A hotel or homestay with a view of the lake would have been even better. The next factor was food. Proximity to nearby places worth visiting was another important aspect in our decision making. With these factors in mind, we narrowed down on two areas – 1) around lake Pichola 2) around Fateh Sagar Lake.

Upon further exploration, we found that the lake Pichola area has many city attractions located at walking distance. It also has many hotels and homestays surrounding the lake. But the area is almost in the heart of the old city. This meant narrow and congested lanes to navigate, and an area populated and abuzz with activities to live. However, the area in and around Fateh Sagar lake is a part of the new town (developed as a result of expansion in past few decades or so). The new town is lesser populated and more airy. The lake is big, with lesser traction, clear waters and an amazing backdrop of Aravali Hills. Our heart instantly went to the later. Although we liked some options of accommodation in both the areas, finally we ended up preferring the later due to the above reasons.

How we landed at Ram Pratap Palace?

Nevertheless, we communicated with a few accommodation options in both the areas to see which one was giving us the best deal. After getting the quotes and comparing the pros and cons of each place, our final shortlist was Hotel Ram Pratap palace. Here’s our reasons for choosing Ram Pratap palace :

1. The natural beauty : the proximity to Fateh Sagar Lake, the backdrop of Aravali Hills at this hotel’s location simply doesn’t let one feel they are in a small and populated city of Rajasthan. To feel being right in the lap of nature was our first priority and we found no better place that could meet this criteria.
2. Budget : The accommodation charges or Ram Pratap Palace fit right into our budget
3. Proximity to city attractions : Although located near Fateh Sagar Lake, this hotel is only around 2km from Lake Pichola and most of the other attractions in the city.. we would count that as a walking distance.
4. Proximity to railway station : We were arriving in Udaipur via an overnight train from Jaipur , this hotel was almost 4-5 km from the railway station. They also had pickup and drop facility.
5. Food: The hotel has a nice restaurant (that deserves a post of it’s own and I will write it soon). The reviews were quiet strong. This seemed to satisfy our food requirements as well.

Thus, we decided and booked this one for our stay in Udaipur.

Upon arriving at Ram Pratap Palace

The first impression

We traveled overnight from Jaipur and arrived at Udaipur from an early morning train. As we stepped into the morning air of Udaipur and drove through the wide roads towards our hotel, we were immediately impressed by the city. Upon arrival, we found the hotel premises to be much more beautiful than what we had anticipated from the pictures (usually it’s the other way round, pictures are more glorified than reality ).

Day one

We arrived at the hotel by 8am, which was much before the regular check-in time.  However, we were immediately provided with 2 out of 3 rooms that we had booked. We arrived in the room with our luggage, hoping to get fresh and get some rest. As soon as we drew the curtains upon the window, we were greeted with a picture perfect view. Right across the window was the beautiful Fateh Sagar Lake , guarded by the equally beautiful hills at the other end.  There are a couple of big fountains, a garden and some other stops in the middle of the lake. Boating was going on. The whole scene was simply mesmerizing, so much so that we forgot our chores and sat on the window seat for quiet some time enjoying the view.

Into the restaurant

After getting fresh we headed for breakfast. The in-house restaurant , Raj Bagh Garden Restaurant, is located right across the street from the hotel. This street is mostly free. The restaurant has outdoor seating under the sky and in the shade as well as indoor seating. We opted for the indoor seating. We proceeded with a decent breakfast spread. But our little daughter was delighted to see the vast lawn. She didn’t bother the sun or the heat, nor in the least did she feel exhausted by the train journey of the night before. She had her breakfast running across the lawn ( And we had to keep running behind her to feed her. Little did we know this was going to be the norm for the rest of the days that we were going to be here. 😀 )

A beautiful day

After breakfast, we rested for a couple of hours in our rooms before proceeding for lunch. After lunch, we enjoyed half day trip to Shilpgram and Sahelion ki Bari by a cab arranged from the hotel itself. The cab driver was quiet calm, polite and served as our guide too at many places. We had an awesome time overall. After arriving back at our rooms, we pulled the curtains open and found the view of the lake and beyond even more beautiful. The whole periphery of the lake glittered with street lights, and those of passing by vehicles while the land spots within the lake were also twinkling like starts.  Aah! falling asleep to that view was the most beautiful end to a beautiful day that we could have imagined.

The next day morning, we took a walk around the hotel premises, admiring it’s beauty even further. We had breakfast post which the same taxi as the day before was arranged for our day’s excursion.

Tastefully done hotel

The architecture of Ram Pratap Palace indeed resembles a palace. The white marble flooring and pale yellow walls are well complemented by beautiful paintings, carvings and artifacts.

Upon arrival, one goes through the small and tidy reception area to arrive in a courtyard. It immediately gives the feeling of residing in a haveli. The ground floor rooms are appointed all around this courtyard. There’s a Tulsi Chabutra in the middle of the courtyard. And then there’s a beautiful staircase through this courtyard, with marble steps and iron railings that leads to the upper floors (Oops, there are no lifts though!).

The first floor houses a few rooms, a small open courtyard with space to sit and a beautiful nice boutique tugged at one side. Above the boutique is the hotel’s in-house spa.

The second floor has a wide corridor leading to the rooms.

All our rooms were located on this floor. (There are rooms with and without lake view, the ones without are less priced). The rooms were well well appointed with almost all amenities that one looks for – cozy bed, beautiful window seating (although not in all rooms), AC, drinking water, coffee and tea pouches, water kettle, a cupboard and clean bathrooms appointed with required toiletries.

Ceilings at the roof

However, as I lied on the bed for the first time, my attention was immediately drawn to the beautiful painting done on the ceiling of the room. Later I saw the paintings were different in each room. Ours had pink and blue flowers, our parent’s had same flower pattern in golden and the third room had a different pattern altogether. I was highly impressed. (I am planning to soon try something similar on my own roof 😛 )

Antique lock and key system

Unlike most of the other hotels that I have stayed in so far, Hotel Ram Pratap Palace rooms are guided by the old lock and key system wherein a big robust lock is put on each door and the guest is handed over it’s key 🙂 Our little one was super excited to operate the lock. One afternoon she grabbed the key and ran to unlock the door (which was actually already unlocked). However, she didn’t want to disappoint herself, so, she went ahead and tried the key in the lock of adjacent room (which was luckily vacant) . However, we didn’t realize it until we started searching frantically for the key and finally found it hung in the lock of the door adjacent to ours. 🙂 🙂

Overall we had a very comfortable stay and a nice experience. The restaurant was also nice. We had 3 candle light dinners under the starts, right besides the lake in a row 😀 and our daughter thoroughly enjoyed running around in the lawn all the time she could. On our second last day in Udaipur, I even went over to the roof. The roof also had benches and seating arrangements to sit and enjoy the view beyond. Would we like to stay here again, definitely yes.

Some improvements that would be nice

Few little things here and there:

• The drinking water provided lasted very soon. The place was hot and we felt thirsty a lot. We had to keep asking for it. A bigger vessel or some complementary bottles would be appreciated.
• The restaurant services in the evening were slower than expected. One day, we ordered coffee which was actually served with our early dinner 🙂
• Lack of a lift facility at the premises may keep elderly at bay. Only option for them would be a ground floor room.
• Wifi was slow.
• Phone reservations are not available on Sundays
• Pickup and drop was quiet costlier as compared to outside taxi. We took a prepaid taxi from railway station to hotel. On our way back to the railway station we took uber cabs. For city site seeing around Lake Pichola also we booked uber cabs. The cabs were easily available in that area at a few minutes call so we didn’t face any inconvenience at any point of time.

Contact:

Hotel address:

Hotel Ram Pratap Palace
5-B, Alakpuri
Fateh Sagar Lake
Udaipur, Rajasthan 313001

Hotel reservations:

Direct Line : +91-294-2431701/2432961
Mob. : +91 8696945107
Email : [email protected]

Website: http://www.hotelrampratap.com/

 

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