CITY PALACES
(Rajasthani
Ramblings Part 3)
Travel
Tales Index - Rajasthani Ramblings Index - India
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From
the bird sanctuary in Bharatapur, our next destination was Deeg where the
Rajasthan Maharajas had their summer palace. The palace was occupied until the
last maharaja donated it to the state in 1956.
On the roof of the palace was a 600,000 gallon water tank to store water
to run the five hundred fountains on the property. They had huge fans hanging from the ceiling
that were operated by servants from outside the palace using a pulley system. While the palace was quite impressive from an
architectural and artistic standpoint, the town of
The
In
After
finishing the museum (1/2 hour for me, 2 hours for Lois!), we walked through
the city palace which now houses government offices. There was a beautiful
marble cenotaph (mausoleum) with painted ceilings and carved marble walls in a
plaza. A bunch of boys were playing cricket against one of its walls! I think
when you live with so many ornate buildings, you don't appreciate the value of
them. The whole city palace was like this. Unfortunately, I suspect this will
lead to an eventual deterioration of the beauty.
From
Alwar, we headed to
Early
the next morning, we hired a "gypsy" and driver to take us on a
safari through the park. The driver started off by telling us they hadn't seen
a tiger in 2 months but a leopard was seen yesterday. We didn't see either, but we saw peacocks,
kingfishers, parakeets, peacocks, blue bulls, spotted deer, peacocks, antelope,
wild boar, peacocks, jackals, sambor and, did I mention, peacocks! The park had some very large hills and we drove
all over and had a very nice 3 hour tour. Given we figured our chances of
actually seeing a tiger were low, we decided to head on to Jaipur.
Jaipur
("The Pink City") is an old walled city with red sandstone buildings.
Lois said it looked coral, not pink, I said, "whatever". As usual,
the city palace was one of the highlights of the city. It housed museums of textiles, weapons and
paintings. The most unusual building in Jaipur was the Hawa Mahal ("
While
in Jaipur, we had a rickshaw ride where the driver had a guest book he asked us
to fill out! The guy was quite a talker and quite a (scary) driver. Never
looked where he was going, just pedaled through traffic as he turned around and
talked with us. For some reason, we were very happy to get down from his
rickshaw! He told us he wasn't from
Jaipur but went there to work. He rented the rickshaw for 20 rupees a day,
spent 20 rupees on food, another 40 on a place to sleep and on a good day made
a 80-120 rupee profit which he said he was happy with (43 rupees = $1).
From
Jaipur, we took a day trip to Amber, about a forty five minute bus ride. Amber
consisted of a couple of souvenir stands, a restaurant or two and Jaigarh fort
which contained the
After
Jaipur, we had originally planned to visit
We
left Jaipur for Nawalgarh and ended up staying there for three nights because
we unfortunately got sick the first night.
Luckily, we were staying in a pretty comfortable guest house and the
Cipro we took kicked in quickly. We had
been very careful about where we ate, but sooner or later, I guess the odds
caught up with us. By around 2:00PM the next day we were ready to take on the
world - or at least walk around Nawalgarh a little.
Nawalgarh
was the first town on our tour in the Shekawati region of Rajasthan. Shekawati is known for its painted havelis -
ornate houses with multiple courtyards owned by well to do merchants. They were
basically outdoor works of art on the exterior of people's homes. The paintings
ranged from religious scenes to nature scenes to famous people and events.
Walking around town, we saw a few exceptional havelis, but many, many more that
were in a sad state of deterioration with much of the painting obliterated by
time, the elements and graffiti.
The
following day, we took a little trip to Parasrampura which was a bit off the
beaten path. It wasn't a particularly friendly town, maybe due to the fact that
they rarely saw tourists or didn't benefit from the tourist traffic that they
saw. We couldn't figure it out but we
still managed to make our way around.
There were two 300 year old havelis that were in reasonably good
condition and were actively being preserved. They were mostly paintings of
Hindi religious icons - Ganesh, Vishnu, Krishna etc.
From
Nawalgarh, we headed to Fatehpur, stopping in Mandawa for lunch and a look
around. For this journey, we had Indians helping us every step of the way,
making sure we got on and off the right buses at the right time, a nice change
from the Parasrampura trip! In Mandawa,
we ordered lunch at an attractive hotel with courtyard where we chatted with an
Austrian tourist. The hotel told us it
would take an hour to prepare lunch so we left our backpacks and spent the time
exploring the town. We saw about 5
gorgeous havelis all of which had been turned into hotels! Lunch was very
tasty, but after being sick, it takes a few days to enjoy food again and not
approach every meal with trepidation.
After
lunch, we hopped on a bus to Fatehpur, our last stop in the Shekawati
region. Walking around Fatehpur, we saw
a number of havelis in excellent shape and a number that had been given up on. After three days of seeing havelis, we had
seen enough. It turned out we made the right choice to reduce the number of
days we spent in Shekawati. In Fatehpur,
we stayed at the Rajasthan Tourist Development Commission (RTDC) hotel, the
only one in town. It had a great staff
- very attentive and helpful and a nice
little restaurant. We had dinner and met
a very nice English couple. They were
traveling a similar route to ours in style with a car and driver.
The
next morning was the beginning of one of the best days we have had in Rajasthan
in terms of traveler’s luck/karma. We
had intended to get up early to leave for
In
Bikaner, the Austrian's driver took us to our hotel where there was a bit of a
traffic jam which we realized was due to a procession of camels going through
the streets to start off the camel festival - which was right across the street
from our hotel - score number two! We
dropped off our bags at the hotel and ran over to the stadium across the street
where we got front row seats in a "Foreign Tourists" section - score
number three! The ride alone made it a great day, never mind the two additional
pieces of luck.
The
camel festival was interesting and a lot of fun. We spent almost the whole day
watching camel milking, camel dancing, best decorated camel, best design cut
into a camel's fur, oldest married couple, best costumed Maharaja and Maharani
etc. While we did have front row seats, it really didn't matter since you could
walk right up to the camels and participants and take whatever pictures you
wanted. At dinner, we hung out with a
Dutch couple we first met in Fatehpur Sikri, caught up and debriefed each other
on the festival. A great way to end the
day and this travelogue...
