Udaipur

Udaipur is a city built around water, and the practical consequence for a traveller is that almost nothing is far from anything else. The old town sits in a tight grid of lanes between the lake and the palace, and most of what people come to see is within a twenty-minute walk of it.

That compactness is why we tend to suggest two nights here rather than one. A single night means arriving, seeing the palace and leaving; two gives you an evening on the water and a morning in the lanes before the heat builds.

Stays divide fairly cleanly into three kinds: converted courtyard houses in the old town, mid-size hotels on the roads leading out of it, and resort properties on the far shore. Which one suits depends almost entirely on whether you want to walk out of your door into the city or away from it.