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Panghat Spa
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The recently renovated Panghat Spa at the Jagmandir Palace in Udaipur offers guests a modern holistic spa experience in traditionally done up treatment rooms, finds Amrit Dhillon

The spa at the newly restored 17th century Jagmandir palace that floats in Lake Pichola in Udaipur is a gem of Rajasthani sensibility. 

Compact and elegantly furnished, the treatment rooms have three windows each decorated with inlay work and offering fabulous views of the lake and the majestic façade of Fateh Prakash Palace.

 Jagmandir Palace, which used to be patronised by royal princes as a ‘pleasure palace’ has recently been restored with the addition of this new spa, called Panghat or ‘Water Fountain’.

 You approach the spa through bordered lawns decorated with stone elephants and surrounded by ‘chhatris’ (canopies) and open terraces propped up by carved pillars that overlook the lake. 

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 The views from the spa are big but it is the small details in the treatment rooms that create a soothing and pleasing ambience. The rooms are rounded and topped with a cupola. As you lie there, enjoying a ‘Shiroskandh Abhyangam’ massage, you gaze at the cupola’s ceiling – a spectacular work of art, decorated with painted lime plaster set with coloured stones and mirrors. In the walls, decorated with low relief motifs, are traditional Rajasthan  niches framed by colourful decorative borders of flowers and leaves.

 But none of the Rajasthani details are overdone. The overall look is a combination of comfortable modern furnishings and fittings, complemented by touches of Rajasthani tradition such as the coloured glass lamps and scalloped arches outside in the canopied corridors leading to Panghat. 

After a relaxing massage, the place to sit and have a drink is on the elegant sun loungers lying on the lawn directly outside Panghat. The other lawns, spread all the way to the Picholi Bar, at the other end of Jagmandir.

The bar is made out of 12 huge pieces of white marble where you can sit at gigantic windows looking out onto the lake and, beyond it, to the fabulous backdrop of the Aravalli’s, the oldest mountains in the world.

The Darikhan

With its marble columns and high ornamented ceilings, the Darikhana restaurant is a throwback to a gilded age. Just across a courtyard and a rose garden from the spa, it used to be open on all sides but is now air-conditioned and offers Indian and continental cuisine.

The Lawns

Just outside the spa are beautiful lawns surrounded by terraces and balconies where guests can enjoy a drink and shoot the breeze, surrounded by the marbled splendour of Jag Mandir’s exquisite architecture.