Waterside homes in Udaipur, Rajasthan

Udaipur was founded in the sixteenth century when the Mewar court moved off the plain into a bowl in the Aravallis, and its water is engineered rather than natural. Pichola, Fateh Sagar, Swaroop Sagar and Udai Sagar are a linked system of dammed lakes, and the old city presses right up against the first of them. The house type is the haveli: rooms around one or more courtyards, walls of thin lakhori brick in lime mortar, carved stone brackets holding a jharokha out over the lane, and stairs that keep climbing to a terrace where the whole point is the view back across the water to the ghats. Lime plaster in blue and white covers most of the old quarter around Gangaur Ghat, laid thick enough to keep the heat out of rooms with very small windows.

The Aravallis around it are why Udaipur is greener than the rest of Rajasthan, and Kumbhalgarh, Ranakpur and the Nagda temples are all within a morning's drive.