Jal Mahal

Jal Mahal (meaning "Water Palace") is a palace located in the middle of the Man Sagar Lake in Jaipur city, the capital of the state of Rajasthan, India. The palace and the lake around it were renovated and enlarged in the 18th century by Maharaja Jai Singh II of Amber.

The urban lake gets filled up during the rainy season; over the years, once the reservoir became full during rainy season, it got covered with Hyacinth. During this period the red stoned palace became approachable only by boat and through a causeway, and presented a spectacle on the way to Jaipur city from Delhi.

The lake got polluted due to sewage flow from the Jaipur city. The palace remained uninhabited, was not maintained and hence not visited by tourists. To remove the ecological damage caused to the lake due to indiscriminate pollution from the city sewage, restoration measures were undertaken, since 2001, after a detailed study by the Government of Rajasthan. But serious efforts were initiated only in 2004 through a very large restoration project undertaken through a joint-venture company called the Project Development Company Limited (PDCOR Ltd), Jaipur, a private enterprise (a consortium led by KGK Group), in association with the Government of Rajasthan, with institutional support provided by the Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS), a parastatal organization of the Government of India, and the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOE&F). The basic objective of the project is conservation and management of the lake in regard to ecological development, sustainable fisheries development, and wildlife development. The purpose of the project is also to cater to the tourist industry, because Rajasthan attracts the largest number of tourists every year; 650,000 national and 175,000 international tourists are said to visit the state every year. Tourism in the state of Rajasthan is generally monument-centric, particularly in Jaipur and in this context Jal Mahal has an important role.