Jan 17th - Catching the Jaipur bus to Bundi

Generally spent the day trying to locate money changers in the city, and seemed to spend a lot of time in autorickshaws on terribly bumpy roads. On one ocasion my head hit the roof of the vehicle with considerable force, such that I felt it would penetrate the roof of the vehicle, and I momentarily reflected upon how the Manchester Evening News might report on my sudden demise ..... "Local Man Perishes in Freak Tuk Tuk Accident". As unpleasant as it is to be a passenger in these vehicles, you have to feel for the drivers in having to negotiate these insane Indian roads every single day. That seems a particularly ghastly punishment, on top of having to negotiate the price of each and every journey.

Having devised the itinerary for Rajasthan with Om, the hotel manager in Jaipur, I took a regular bus to the town of Bundi, which I'd never heard of but Om highly recommended in order to visit the fort. Catching the bus was quite a race against time in the end, as I managed to find a helpful guy in the Samsung store who gave me some straightforward advise on creating a blog - a rare find! 

The bus journey was extremely cheap but not particularly comfortable. It took quite a while to locate the bus stand where it left from. Om had kindly organised the ticket for me, which was actually a sleeper, that would have involved me clambering up to a sleeping compartment above a row of seats, and I could all too easily picture myself falling out of that narrow space all and risking injury to both myself and the passengers below given the absence of a protective rail. So I managed to obtain a regular seat instead, which at least meant I could nod off without risking life and limb. The journey seemed to  go on forever as we stopped in so many little towns. Nonetheless when we got away from the urban areas, the rural views were really lovely. 

Arriving in Bundi, i booked myself into a pretty cheap haweli which turned out to be probably the most interesting place I stayed in India. A haveli is basically a townhouse that would have enabled an extended family to live together under one roof, divided into separate sections, with a courtyard providing a space where the family could

Bundi Fort by night

Bundi haveli

come together. The haveli I stayed in dated from the 1680s and had been renovated over the past five years. Bundi's main draw is its spectacular fort, and arriving at the haveli restaurant in darkness, I got an incredible view of the fort over dinner, and I later discovered that the family who owned the haveli had been in the service of the Rajput kings, hence the fantastic location they had been provided with.

Bundi haveli