Jal Mahal

This guide to Jal Mahal in Jaipur traces the palace's start as an eighteenth-century hunting lodge built by Maharaja Madho Singh I at the center of Man Sagar Lake, itself created after a seventeenth-century famine forced a dam across the Darbhawati River. You'll hear how four of its five floors ended up submerged beneath the waterline, and how two centuries of neglect turned the lake into a dumping ground before a restoration begun in 2004 started reversing the damage. Look out at the palace's reflection in the now-clear water as you listen.