Talkatora Royal Tank

Talkatora is the quiet water at the back of Jaipur's power. Where crowds pour into the City Palace and Hawa Mahal a few lanes away, this rectangular royal tank sits calm behind the Jai Niwas Garden, its far embankment closed off not by a wall but by the honey-and-white facade of the Badal Mahal.

• The name itself describes the place: 'tal' for tank, 'katora' for bowl, a sheet of water set like a shallow katora into the surrounding stone.
• For most of Jaipur's history this was not a scenic spot but plumbing of the grandest kind, a reservoir that helped supply the palace quarter with water.
• The tank belongs to the founding plan of the city.
• When Sawai Jai Singh II laid out Jaipur in 1727 on a rigorously gridded scheme, the water body was kept inside the palace precinct rather than pushed to the margins, and the Badal Mahal that overlooks it counts among the oldest surviving structures of that first royal core.
• From its terraces the ruler could look out over the water toward the hills, and the pavilion features in accounts of court gatherings held during the great festival seasons.
• Those festivals are why Talkatora still matters to Jaipuris.
• By long tradition, the processions of Gangaur and Teej, the spring and monsoon festivals honouring Gauri and Parvati, wind out of the City Palace complex and end here, where the clay images are brought for immersion and earthen pots are broken into the tank.
• Come on those evenings and the still water becomes the emotional full stop of a day-long parade of drums, palanquins and colour; the rest of the year it keeps the memory in reserve.
• A civic restoration has coaxed the tank back to life as a public place, with cleaned embankments, walking edges and an evening light-and-water display; treat show timings and any ticketed evening programme as things to confirm on the day, since these change.
• By daylight it is simply a serene lakeside walk with the Badal Mahal mirrored in the surface, a rare pocket of stillness inside the old city.
• For the vegetarian traveller the setting could not be friendlier, because Talkatora sits in the heart of Jaipur's meat-shy old town, ringed by pure-vegetarian sweet houses and thali kitchens.
• You are minutes from Johari Bazaar and the palace gates, so pair the tank with a plate of kachori or a bowl of ghewar.
• As always in Jaipur, ask specifically for eggless when you order bakery items and cakes, since a 'pure veg' board here does not automatically mean egg-free; the classic halwai sweets and thali houses nearby are safe ground.