SMALL TOWNS AND BIG CITIES

(Rajasthani Ramblings Part 7)

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Believe it or not, we didn't stay in Pushkar for a month, but left after a few days. According to the guidebooks, our next stop, Bundi was a pleasant, small, relatively under touristed town. This seemed to be the case although Bundi was undergoing a huge boom in tourism and new guesthouses were popping up all over. We stayed in a place that had just opened three months prior. It was a 16th century haveli that had been restored to some of its original grandeur. From the rooftop restaurant, we had a perfect view of the city palace and fort that overlooked the town.

Night View of City Palace

Walking around the town, we found it to be very friendly and the absence of children asking for "one rupee", "school pen", "chocolate" was a nice change as well. In fact, when one boy asked us for something, a local yelled at him and told him not to be a beggar. Sometimes, we wondered if they thought "school pen" was just another way of saying hello? In many ways, the best face of any country is often found in the small towns. Large cities in India were anonymous, polluted and congested places while the smaller towns almost always seemed much more pleasant, friendly and offered a better chance of meeting Indians that were not interested in you solely for the size of your wallet.

Standard Cargo Truck

The primary attraction in Bundi was the city palace which was an immense building. It contained a number of beautifully painted rooms in excellent condition. There seemed to be three types: hunting scenes, battle scenes and court scenes. We spent a few hours walking around the maze that was the palace - mostly by ourselves. Afterwards, we walked around the rest of the fort which had great views of the town and valley below but was mostly in ruins and inhabited by many monkeys (thus prompting Lois to keep her hands on her glasses the whole time!).

Painted Walls inside Palace

Bundi City Palace Complex

Bundi was known as "The City of Wells" due its many step wells. The step wells were square, at least forty - fifty feet across at the surface and had a series of staircases leading down to the water. They were works of art that typically had two staircases leading down on each side of the well. Each staircase was maybe 10 steps, then there was a landing, the opening got narrower and another series of staircases led down to the next level. The step wells we saw had at least eight flights of stone steps.

One of Bundi's Step Wells

Another type of well was like stairs leading down to a subway. At least twenty feet wide, the steps led down and down and all along the way were carved bas-reliefs of various deities and animals. Luckily, the best of the wells were locked up, maintained and preserved. We came across many in Bundi while just walking around town. Unfortunately, they cannot preserve all of them and some were left to slowly decay and be used as large garbage dumps. This was a problem all over Rajasthan - either a lack of funds or a lack of desire to preserve many historical buildings and monuments.

From Bundi, we took a quick bus ride to Kota which was a very large, industrial, business city with minimal tourism. Because of this, the guidebooks had almost no information about places to stay. Given the way we choose to travel, the inevitable occurred. We spent a good part of the hot, humid afternoon walking around with our packs unable to find a place to stay. The more we walked, the hotter (and sweatier) we became and the higher Lois’ standards for an acceptable room seemed to rise. In desperation, I called a hotel on the other side of the city that sounded good and it turned out had a vacancy. We hired a rickshaw and ended up in a business area where there were a number of very attractive, reasonably priced business hotels. It ended up being a great area to stay because all the bus routes passed by and we had some incredibly good food in the various hotel restaurants.

While Kota had lots of rickshaws, traffic and congestion, it seemed cleaner than many other places we had been. We walked to Chattar Vilas Gardens which were even nicer than Mandore Gardens by Jodhpur. They had marigolds, bougainvilleas, roses, peonies, cosmos and a number of other flowers I didn’t recognize. There were fountains that actually worked, no domesticated animals and lots of gardeners who were doing a little work while they relaxed. We found a nice grassy spot to sit down and watch the world go by.

While looking for the city palace, we walked into a poorer area that clearly had seen very few tourists. We had an ever increasing crowd of kids following us and jeering at us. We were used to attracting crowds of people in small towns, but here in a big city, we felt very uncomfortable. We walked as quickly as possible toward the main market area to get out of the situation. Eventually, we found the city palace but after seeing so many different city palaces, this one was a disappointment. We only saw four different rooms, two of which had paintings in pretty good condition. Outside the city palace, we had a more positive interaction with some local kids. They asked for our signatures but since no one had any paper, they asked Lois to sign their hands! We couldn’t figure out why and they didn’t explain. I suspected they were trying to either get us to give them a pen or else just some blank paper, but who knows.

Elephant Gate at Kota City Palace

Painted Room within City Palace

From Kota we took the train to Sawai Madhopur and nearby Ranthambore Tiger Reserve for one more shot at seeing tigers. When I say we took the train, it sounded very simple, didn’t it? However, in India, taking the train was anything but simple. We actually had to go to the train station two days in advance to have any chance at getting seats. There were ten trains that went from Kota to Ranthambore and we found each and every one of them in our “Trains of India” timetable so that we knew the train numbers. At the station, there was a general scrum (i.e. Push and shove your way to be first in line at the ticket window) for reservations. Once we got to the front of the line, we had to go through our list of trains to find out which one had seats available. Next, we had to fill out a form with the following information: name, age, passport number, address, coming from, going to, train number and seat type requested. Then, we were finally able to buy tickets. Thankfully, most places (with the exception of Ranthambore) were easy to get to/from by bus.

On arriving in Sawai Madhopur, we actually let the rickshaw driver suggest a place to stay. The town was very small and had only a few rundown hotels, so we went to the area near the park entrance where there were a number of tourist hotels. The one the driver brought us to was well kept, had a nice garden and charged $8 for a reasonable room. We took two tiger safaris and they were lovely rides through a nice park with lakes, many waterholes and various remnants of an 800 year old fort. We saw sambor, spotted deer, crocodiles, spotted owl, storks, kingfishers, blue bulls, monkeys, a mongoose and tiger paw prints. Unfortunately, we were not destined to see tigers in India on this trip.

From Sawai Madhopur, we decided to head back to Agra before returning to Delhi and finishing our “Rajasthani Ramblings”. We went to a store to call a hotel in Agra for reservations. While there, we met Lala who was a driver for a tour agency. He suggested we call the Hotel Apollo, so I did and when I asked what the rate was, they quoted me seventeen dollars. I told Lala this and he took the phone from me, identified himself and told the hotel to give us a room for nine dollars. Apparently, they agreed because he gave them my name and told Lois and I that there would be a nine dollar room for us when we got to Agra!

Want to know if we got the nine dollar room? Or, why did we go back to Agra? Well, you will find out in the next travelogue…

Rajasthani Ramblings Part 6 Rajasthani Ramblings Part 8

All content is copyright © Paul Schneider, 2005.