The Taj Lake Palace

PD Photos: The Taj Lake Palace, a luxury hotel located on Jag Niwas Island in the middle of Lake Pichola in Udaipur.

The Taj Lake Palace, formerly known as Jag Niwas Palace, is an unusual, unique luxury hotel of 83 rooms and suites, located on the Jag Niwas Island in the middle of Lake Pichola in Udaipur, India. It looks like a floating, huge palace in the middle of the lake.

The palace was built in the period 1743-46 by Maharana Jagat Singh II, the 62nd successor to the royal dynasty of Mewar, for use as his royal summer palace. The successive rulers also used the Lake Palace as their summer resort, holding their regal Durbars in its courtyards lined with columns, pillared terraces, fountains and gardens.

The palace is set against the backdrop of the majestic Aravalli Mountains on one side of the lake and lofty palaces on the other side. Built in marble, the walls are ornamented with arabesques of different colored stones as in the Taj Mahal at Agra.

During the reign of Bhopal Singh (1930-55) another pavilion, Chandra Prakash, was added. His successor Bhagwat Singh decided to convert the palace into Udaipur’s first luxury hotel.

In 1971, Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces (collective name for The Indian Hotels Company Limited and its subsidiaries owned by the Tata Group) took over management of the hotel. The Royal Butlers, the descendants of the original palace butlers, look after the comforts of the hotel guests.

The Lake Palace was featured in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy, as the floating palace of the fabulously wealthy woman Octopussy, played by Bond girl Maud Adams.

Poseidon Undersea Resort

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The Poseidon Undersea Resorts, a proposed chain of underwater five-star resorts, will have first of the resorts on a private island in Fiji. It will be the first underwater hotel/ resort in the world once construction is completed. Poseidon was conceived and developed by L. Bruce Jones, president of U.S. Submarines, Inc. and financed by TOPA equities Corp.

The Poseidon underwater resort will be linked to land through two tunnels. The resort will feature an underwater restaurant, a lounge, 20 luxury suites, one themed suite, a grand suite, and an undersea bungalow accessible by submarine. It will also have an onshore facility with five-star hotel amenities.

Each of the rooms will have 270 degree view of the ocean. Each end of the resort will be composed of a 3,000-square-foot (280 sq meters), Frisbee shaped underwater pod. One of these pods will have an underwater restaurant and bar and the other will have a library, conference room, wedding chapel, spa and a 1,200-square-foot (110 sq meters) luxury suite. The resort will be accessed through elevators.

Reservations at the resort is expected to cost $30,000 per couple per week, and will include four nights in a luxury beach or over-water villa and two nights in the luxury underwater suite. The resort also offers a variety of land and sea activities such as golf and diving onboard a luxury expedition submarine.