Chameli Bagh: Green again

Jaipur, Dec. 26: Chameli Bagh, a lost 18th-century garden atop a palace whose lowest floor is under water several months a year, will be a Rs 1,000-crore new-year gift for tourists to Jaipur.

Jal Mahal, the palace in the middle of Mansagar lake built in 1799 by Sawai Pratap Singh, served as a “floating pavilion of pleasure” for Rajput kings who used it for duck shooting parties. The lake fell into disuse over 100 years ago and gradually became a sewage dump, the filth and the stench keeping visitors away.

The four-storey red sandstone palace and the terrace garden with a magnificent view of the Nahargarh hills will for the first time open to tourists in mid-January thanks to the Mansagar and Jal Mahal Revitalisation programme, a public-private partnership to develop Mansagar Valley as a tourist corridor.

The valley, located in the vicinity of the imposing Amer, Nahargarh and Jaigarh forts, is the gateway to Jaipur from the Delhi side and is about 20km from the airport.

Jal Mahal Resorts, a private firm, has taken the lake and the area around it — totalling 432 acres — on a 99-year lease from the state government to create a fully integrated tourist destination.

The 310 acres of the lake and the palace cannot be used for commercial purposes but the 100-acre stretch around it will be used to generate revenue.

The idea is to “create a tourism hub, a destination in itself, using Jal Mahal as a bait”, said Rajeev Lunkad, project director at Jal Mahal Resort.

“Most of the work is wrapped up except the entrance and finishing touches. It has been decided to have a soft launch in January and later it will be thrown open to the public. It would be the first time that Jaipurites and tourists would be able to see and visit the garden and Jal Mahal. Even the present Jaipur royal family, headed by Brigadier Bhawani Singh, visited it for the first time only recently,” Lunkad added.

The complete project will cost over Rs 1,000 crore, said N.R. Kothari, chairman of KGK Enterprises, parent company of Jal Mahal Resorts.

Chameli Bagh, built with arched passages in the Rajput and Mughal style and accessible only to the royal family, was lost over time.

It has been redesigned by American designer Mitchell Crites, who used the “char bagh” concept for the makeover. It now follows the pattern of Amer, with four square gardens on each side. The garden is all white, with only white flowers and the white Andhi marble found in the existing columns of Jal Mahal and the palaces of Amer and Jaipur.

The rectangular chhatri on the roof is influenced by the Bengal style of architecture.

Plans are afoot to create a museum on the third floor, recreating the history of Jaipur with rare photographs. Tourists will be transported to the palace in boats shaped like a swan, a horse etc, and will likely spend a couple of hours taking it in.

The lowest floor, which only has passageways and no rooms, is submerged during the monsoon months when water in Mansagar reaches about 99 metres.

Chameli Bagh and its restoration, which has taken around seven years, was featured in the BBC series Around the World in 80 Gardens.

Crites, the designer, said: “The BBC team was fascinated by the fact that they could be present at the birth of a major contemporary garden, which has its roots in the 18th century and also incorporates latest developments in the 21st century like water technology, lighting features and horticulture.”