End of the Line

Tuesday 13th May

- in which we try and find a way out of Bundi for the near future and have no success at all.
- the Raniji-ki-Baori step well
- dining with the ladies of the R N Haveli

our courtyard (Philippa is on the swing), leading to...

...upstairs.

travel throughout Rajasthan, as throughout much of India as we understand from people we have met, can be both a smooth but also a very frustrating affair. moving around the East, North and West of the state had not proven too taxing at all, but as soon as we hit Udaipur - or rather, as soon as we had finally managed to get there - our travelling options dried up to only a few. our first day in Bundi was to be, as now seems to be the routine, set aside for plans and orientation, but it was to prove a tiring and supremely frustrating day that made us feel a little stuck at the end of the line and led us to ignore the beauty of Bundi for much of its duration.

a breakfast of masala tea, sweet lassi and toast and honey was great, even if Raj had to go out and buy the toast and honey. his younger brother made the first of many visits to sit beside us, stare and hard sell his tour assistance. this started as an irritation in the morning and was fully annoying by the end of the day after his fifth or sixth repetition of his identically worded spiel. on Raj's advice, we took all of our laundry - which constituted almost all of our clothes - down to the local dhobi-wallah, which had good quoted rates for the traditional Indian clothes thrashing. lots of other clothes were drying to a crisp in the morning sun. the incredibly wiry dhobi-wallah took our clothes with a smile after counting the number of items. we crossed our fingers and waved them goodbye - we trusted the dhobi-wallah, but the clothes might come back a little... tired.

from town to palace to fort (to unsightly telecoms aerial), Bundi.

Bundi is only a small place, but we felt that a map might come in useful, so we set off to find the tourist information office. this proved to be more distant from the town centre than it had any right to be, but this is becoming the norm for such places on our trip. similarly, there was no one in it and the doors were locked. air conditioned coolness drifted out under the door's edge. a while later, the man in charge decided to turn up on the back of a motorbike and let us in. he rattled at great speed through all that could be done in Bundi and its surrounds without us getting many words in ourselves. he gave us some half answers to our questions and a map in weird scale, plus some half decent brochures for Bundi and also for Mount Abu, a destination we hoped to reach in the near future. however, it still felt like a wasted journey.

side street, Bundi, Rajasthan.

market, Bundi.

Bundi, like Chittor, was noticeably warmer than Udaipur. we worked our way back through the punishing sun and into the rather pretty old town again to blog, email and search for trains, transport, water buffalo or even a goat that could get us to our next destination, Ahmedabad, a long way away in the neighbouring state Gujarat and home to the famous calico museum that was high up on Philippa's list of must see things. this only served to increase our frustrations of the day; we would have to go on to Kota to get either to Mt. Abu or Ahmedabad unless we went back through Chittor and stayed another night, there, which was to say the least both highly unlikely and most undesirable. the 11 hour train to Ahmedabad was only once a week and appeared to be full, while we could not find any details of bus or coach services. it looked like we would have to go on to Kota and cross our fingers. hard.

the streets of Bundi...


...where, like all Indian towns, you are never far from a choice of padlocks.

gateway to the old 'city,' Bundi.

heat and an almost total lack of information on transport options for a very long journey had left us tetchy and dispirited. in search of something for lunch, we rooted around an apparently closed guesthouse and were rewarded for our efforts with lunch beside the almost dry Nawal Sagar water reservoir, at this time of year a mostly algae covered home for grazing cows. water buffalo and dogs enjoyed what water there was.

in the centre, a large temple-like kiosk stood marooned by the lack of a surrounding lake. at the far end, sculpted stone steps led ghat-like up to the ruined old home of the maharaja. our host scavenged a plastic table and two chairs and we had fresh lemon sodas for the first time in days, as well as a snack, in the shade of a small tree. save for the main road in the middle distance contouring round a steep hill, everything appeared to be holding its breath and waiting for even the tiniest of breezes to assuage the heat.

on the way back to the elephant stables, we picked up our immaculate laundry from the dhobi. his iron was twice the size of a Western one and made of bolted wood and cast iron. Edd could barely lift it with both hands and the handle was uncomfortably hot to the touch. the dhobi-wallah was half Edd's size and just smiled at his efforts, very generous considering we had just woken him up to get our laundry back.

rest proved only half-successful due to the heat and our frustrations. in the late afternoon, we spent quite a while on an apparently fruitless search for a travel agent, we think the only one in the town during off season. located right at the very end of our patience, the chair plus sign and one man that constituted the travel agents we spoke to provided us with absolutely no useful information of any description for our next stage travel plans. as the day drew to a close, we were still not yet sure how we were going to get out of the region.

elephant capitals, roadside temple, Bundi.

in search of some relief, the Raniji-ki-Bari proved a welcome distraction, a massively deep and extensive step well by one of the main roads.

Philippa, step well and onlookers, Bundi.

stone steps led inexorably and apparently perpetually down, much embellished by elephant carvings and dramatic 'S' shaped brackets. it looked more like the grand entrance to a subterranean Bond villain's lair than a well.

we were bickering quite a lot and the day had not at all gone as planned, such as plans had been. hoping for a change of scenery and mood, we headed off to find the RN Haveli, a guesthouse that was our second choice after the elephant stables and particularly notable in India because it is run entirely by women, a brave and convention-breaking thing to do, here. as if to underline this point, the mother and two daughters outfit have suffered a lot of direct interference from male rivals, so we wanted to show our support. finding their guesthouse ramped up our irritations, though, as we took a wrong turn and were besieged by an unusually aggressive and unpleasant pack of scratching, pulling street kids.

the guesthouse, when found, was a homely place centred on a small room filled with photos and books, all aligned and focused on a television showing endless cod-melodramatic Indian soaps, watched by the more boisterous of the two sisters. a quiet, pleasant Italian guy and a striking French couple, all with good English (oh, our shame yet again), were the current guests. the matriarch rolled around in a pleasingly grandmotherly manner while preparing delicious thalis for all of us, no small undertaking considering the fact that she had injured feet. we ate in the garden, a rarity in Bundi, with some good conversations on places travelled and plans made. by the time that we had eaten and left it was already quite late and we hurried straight to bed.

it was exasperating not to plan our trip's next stage properly - all of the necessary information was seemingly non-existent. we'd both got ourselves quite wound up and hoped for better luck tomorrow, when we also wanted to squeeze in a trip to the palace directly above us.

it's such an impressive sight, it was a little unnerving to recognise how easily we had forgotten all about it in our fulminations as we sought some way of getting to Ahmedabad. like the India we have already explored, to focus on the inefficiencies and impracticalities can sometimes blind you to the magnificence of what is all around.

best

edd & philippa