DESTINATIONS

Rajasthan is the place I have been saving up, like some people save Venice. When I visited India for the first time, 15 years ago, I deliberately avoided the most romantic state in the world so that I could one day return with the love of my life and enough money in my pocket to stay in maharajas' palaces, drifting between fairy-tale forts and spice bazaars, probably escorted by a man with an impressive turban carrying an embroidered parasol. I fully expected this trip to be straight out of the pages of an EM Forster or The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, with unprecedented shopping opportunities thrown in. I knew with absolute certainty that it would live up to my most florid romantic imaginings — rose petals showering down from marble cupolas; looking out over a moonlit lake while drums pounded in the distance — because I'd seen the pictures, heard the stories, and because India is the continent that never disappoints. It was only a matter of time. And then I waited, and I waited.

Now, 15 years later, I am making the trip to Udaipur — the Venice of the East — with my husband of four years and my 16-year-old stepson. We are all knackered (one of us is surly and hormonal too) and we have just one week, wedged into the crammed work diary, and, I am, frankly, anxious that the fantasy I have been honing all this time will have to be shelved in favour of something more family friendly. The stepson is missing a day at Thorpe Park and the promise of visiting the most romantic city in India, renowned for its miniature painting and rich history — it's situated right on the lake!; it's the only city in India never to have been conquered by invaders! — doesn't necessarily cut it. We promise to order Octopussy, 'filmed in the incredibly famous Taj Lake Palace Hotel', from room service as soon as we arrive and I begin to regret having left it so late to realise my dream.

Maybe you can guess what happens next. We hit the airport tarmac, gulping in the thick, sweet air like stranded fish, pile into our car for the half-hour drive to the shores of the lake, and as we make our way through the honking traffic, dodging cows that walk blithely down the middle of the street, goats herded by men in white dhotis and scarlet turbans, schoolchildren packed in eight to a tuk-tuk, the magic has started to work. Everything seems wildly exotic, from the tractors decorated with tinsel-trimmed pelmets to the piles of breadfruit and painted clay pots stacked at the side of the road. And everyone — in spite of the grinding poverty that makes Rajasthan one of the poorest states in India — seems to be wreathed in brilliant colours...and smiling. By the time we reach the lake, the stepson has the dazed, slack-jawed expression of someone falling in love.

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