Some 6 years ago I developed an interest in photography.
I started experimenting with pictures from my very little Sony SK17i phone (remember that tiny phone with a sliding keypad).

Soon I bought a DSLR and created my first photo blog. The photos I posted in the blog were from my home town Udaipur - an almost 500-year-old city.

It was just a passing interest (the photoblog not photography). I stopped posting within a couple of months after I started.

Yesterday while I was browsing the internet locating something in my city, I saw a picture on a website which was strikingly similar to a picture I had taken. And then I saw the watermark…

It was Stolen from my photo blog!

Rather than feeling bad that no credits were given, I was happy that someone had liked my work.

The blog doesn’t exist anymore, and I have lost all the photos which existed in my old PC.

And since the domain isn’t active, I didn’t have a way to even have a copy of my own work.

But…

I realized that I did post some of the pictures on my Pinterest and Facebook accounts which I created along with the blog.

So here I am sharing some of the pictures I scraped from my own Pinterest and FB accounts. They may be slightly pixelated. But here they are, now on a blockchain.

These are some of the first pictures I captured either on my first smartphone or my first DSLR capturing the beautiful city I was born in.

The blog was www.udaipurography.com, and thus the watermark.
All the pictures, unless mentioned, are taken by me some 5-6 years ago.

Of course, they are not the best pictures of my city, they are as good as clicked by any novice with a phone

And so..

Since this is also the post that will show you my city, I may not want to restrict it to only my images which are limited because I lost many of those from my PC. To compensate the injustice that my photos do to the beautiful city, i have also shared an excellent video in the end of this post which is not captured by me.

I am sharing these pictures in 3 parts:
This post, the first part is about the lakes and landscapes.
The second and third post will have 'Palaces & History' and 'Culture & Art' respectively.

Lakes and Landscapes

My city, Udaipur is situated in western part of India in the state of Rajasthan.
It is very well known for its forts, palaces, lakes, historical and cultural heritage.
But i am not going to take you through the history part today because the next post is dedicated to that one.

This post is about the lakes and landscapes.

Udaipur is situated in one of the oldest mountain ranges in India, The Aravali Range.

It is also called as the city of lakes.
One of the lakes, Lake Fatehsagar, has a solar observatory in the middle of it
How cool is that! 😲

(The small white observatory is not visible in the picture, but it is clearly captured in the video at the end)

This is a man-made lake made a couple of centuries ago by one of the kings that ruled the kingdom of Udaipur.
More history of the kingdom in the next post

All these pictures of Fatehsagar were captured from my phone.
Those 5 megapixel cameras worked fine i guess...

or maybe not :|

The other famous lake, Lake pichhola, the one in the cover image and the one shown in the pictures below, is one of the most beautiful ones in the world.

I took the following pictures of lake pichhola on the same day to capture the different shades during and after the sunset.

What you are seeing in the picture above is one of the banks of lake pichhola. During some of the hindu festivals, those banks are full with people in colorful attire praying to their god.

below is a glimpse of one such festival. (not captured by me)

Source

I guess that was also my first or second day with the DSLR.

Used it well i must say. Self appreciation, but rarely deserve it. 😍😉
Btw... the small island you see in the image below, used to be a guest house for royal guests 😵
Now, one of the ceremonies of some of the biggest destination weddings take place here.

As I mentioned earlier that I was a novice when I first captured these images; also, i lost most of my images due to which i cannot share captures from some of my favourite spots. Hence I am sharing an excellent youtube video which captured Udaipur's landscape in the most beautiful manner possible.

I bet you will make your travel plans after watching this

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So, how did you like my city?
There are two more posts to come on the same topic.
Looking forward to your comments. Cheers 🍻