Bundi

After a few days at Chittorgarh I headed to Bundi. Like medieval Jodhpur only smaller, it has a lovely small-town atmosphere and so far has been only minimally effected by tourists. I came for a few days and ended up staying two weeks. The town has an 14th century fort and 17th century palace overlooking it (though what town in Rajasthan doesn't?) which, like Chittor, gets lit up at night. The real reason to come here though is the town and the people, but since it's hard to photograph friendliness you're stuck with palaces and forts.

Here's a view of the town from the palace.

And here's a night view from the top of my guest house:

The palace on the left and the fort on top of the hill by night. It looks much better in person, my camera just wasn't up to it:


Palace from the fort:


Close up view. No one lives there anymore, although the grounds are kept immaculately:


This was the 'ladies' area and the pool used to be filled with water. There's a mural on one of the walls of the Maharajah peeking at Queen bathing:


Queen's throne:


View of the festy tank:

The real drawcard of the palace are the 17th century paintings and murals done on the walls of various rooms. Anyone who's been to Mmm Pos' living room will know I felt at home here:

Here's Chintu and his wife. They live in a big haveli with Chintu's parents. A haveli is a big house in the old-fashioned sense of the word, in that its upkeep is a full time job. The style in Bundi is similar to Jodhpur - kind of like stone houses you'd imagine in a Greek village, almost like a mini-castle. Lots of rooms (with low doors - reasons are either to show respect when entering a room or so the women can chop the heads off entering theives while the men are away, depending). The haveli's have various little courtyards, rooms added on, rooftop areas, sometimes their own well. The families that live in these houses are the upper-class, usually Brahmins or religious conservatives.

When a woman marries into one of these families, she goes to that house. When Chintu's wife secretly asked me to go to the store and buy some special kind of soap, I realised she couldn't actually go out of the house. But at the same time, she's respected and honoured within the house. I asked if she liked what she was doing (basically running the guesthouse, cooking and cleaning), and she honestly did. So, different cultures. They were both very nice to me. The rooftop restaurant had lovely views, the mother served me lovely food Chintu adopted me as a brother and tought me some Hindi.

Here's some toumists I met. The guy on the right lives in Spain, near the running of the bulls. I got an invitation!

Another one of my 'through the doorway' pics:

One day while walking through the market I met a magician who made my watch stop by touching it, then made matches dance on his hand. I had to resort to the internet to figure out how. By the end of my stay it would take me an hour or so to get to the end of the street, having drunk about 10 cups of chai.

Here's some sort of concert for just women (though men were playing the instruments). I sat in for a while, every now and then one of them would get up and dance. The mic got handed around and everyone took their turn to sing. Turn your head to the side.

On my last day I went for a walk in the woods and found these temples/ruins, just sitting abandoned:

And here's a monkey pondering. Black-faced ones are ok, brown ones are mean. Early one morning I went for a walk through the town and a group of these were making their way across the rooftops and verandahs to wherever they go for the day. On their way they were pulling all the washing down, shorting out power lines, knocking over pot plants, generally being cheeky.

There was a goat who lives on an overhanging roof above a shop, and each monkey would swing down and smack it on the arse as it went by.