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Published: March 10th 2007
Bundi's a local town with local people - friendly, good-natured and genuine. It's only a small place dominated by its looming palace and not touristy at all.
Most of the guesthouses are in the shadow of the palace and that part of Bundi is very quiet with only small shops and miniature painting schools. For that reason, even in a couple of days you start to get familiar with the locals. The town's people actually greet you simply for that purpose, not because thay want something.
Other than the peeps, Bundi's primary attraction is its wonderfully charismatic palace. The exterior is a bit tatty and years of neglect haven't been kind but some of the murals on the walls and ceiling are well preserved and spectacular. There used to be a massive bird and bat problem in the palace but the place has been cleaned up pretty well - the winged ones still live thre though and you still see them pouring out of the palace and dropping their anal ordnance from above!
The upper Chitrasal section of the palace is home to the best painting work and provides inspiration for many of the local artists. Rudyard Kipling
apparently wrote Kim in Bundi and spoke of its jumbled palace. Each succeeding Maharaja added another section so it bcame a mix of differing styles and preference but actually despite that it still looks fairly well ordered - it was inspiration enough for Rudyard. This blog may not be anything like his work but we too were inspired to write something positive about the place.
Next we headed to Udaipur and probably experienced our most uncomfortable journey to date. When we booked a taxi, they failed to tell us that the road had been dug up and a new highway was being built (by hand it seemed)! Our driver was a moody adolescent, didn't smile once and spoke no English (not his fault but we were told he could speak enough to get by!). Communication was difficult to say the least and involved lots of hand waving and misunderstandings. Plus our ride was a shi*ty Omnibus, minibus contraption with stiff unforgiving suspension - not ideal on a bumpy dirt road. We averaged 25km/h for 6 awful hours!
The section from Chittor to Udaipur was good and improved the overall impression of the journey but then our driver couldn't
find our hotel and his ability to communicate effectively with the Udaipur locals in his surly manner, was as successful as with us. In the end we led the orientation - an hour of headless searching was enough. We got it sorted in 5 mins and were happy to wave off our useless, little friend and his cra*py motor!
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