After an extremely frustrating morning trying to book train tickets to Jaipur Chuck and I decided to talk to the Hotel Manager about booking a car and driver to take us around Rajasthan - North West India.
Even though we are very experienced independent travellers and used to booking our own planes, trains, buses and hotels, India is something else! It is so hard to find your way around (no street signs or reliable maps) and unfortunately many people want to "help" you for a fee so it is almost impossible to get a straight answer from anyone when trying to sort out our own travel arrangements. We decided that we would 'surrendor' to India and purchase a package from our hotel - it included an aircon car, private driver, all our hotels, 2 train tickets each and several guided tours. We worked out the cost - only $135/day for the 4 of us!! We were thrilled as this would save us hours and hours of making travel arrangements and tons of frustration. It felt a bit like cheating - but we soon found out that many travellers in this area use the car/driver combination as it is so difficult to do it on your own. With out new plan we were actually going to visit 8 towns in 14 days while our original plan was to visit 2 towns in 8 days, so we would get to see alot more than we expected.
On our first day we drove for 7 hours - it took 2 hours to get out of Delhi as the traffic was so slow, then we were in the countryside passing small villages and fields. The road traffic was amazing - the variety of vehicles we saw was stunning - camels pulling carts, 10 or more people crammed into auto-rickshaws (a motorized tricycle with a bench and roof that comfortable fits 2 Westerners!), rickety buses with people on the roof, trucks painted with bright colors and pom pom decorations with enormous loads of rock in the bed, tractors, motorcycles, bicycles, people walking, goats, and many cows standing or lying on the road.
We then stayed at this beautiful hotel - a Haveli. It is in the town of Mandawa. Mandawa was settled 300 years ago by merchants of the spice trade. The merchants hired artists to decorate their homes, inside and out, with images of family, gods and daily life. The detail of the painting was lovely.
We then stayed at this beautiful hotel - a Haveli. It is in the town of Mandawa. Mandawa was settled 300 years ago by merchants of the spice trade. The merchants hired artists to decorate their homes, inside and out, with images of family, gods and daily life. The detail of the painting was lovely.
Kenna and Cole's room had a sitting room, a balcony and an outside bathroom!
There were also small balconies and windows throughout the building - great to peek out at the town.
We had dinner on the roof that night - watching the sunset over the town and listening to the call to prayer from the 3 different mosques in the town. We felt a million miles away from home - oh so magical!
In the morning we toured the town and had a look at several other Havelis, there are over 200 in this town. We headed to Bikaner at about 10:00 as we had only several hours of driving today. Unfortunately we had car trouble - the fan belt started to fray so we had to limp along slowly for 2 hours in the blistering sun, no airconditioning, to get to a mechanic for repairs.
The next day we visited the current palace of the king. Half of it has been converted to a hotel and the rest is used by the king - it was such a quiet lovely place in the dry dusty city. The staff live outside the palace as well as a large building to house all the elephants (from days gone by).
We also took a drive out to the camel farm to try out camel milk - quite tasty but a little salty!
At sunset we drove out to the desert to Karni Mata Temple where pilgrims worship thousands of holy rats as descendants of the goddess. It is considered lucky to see the white rat - we saw it huddled with the others at the bowl of milk. I could only stay a moment - I really hate rats!
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