Kota Palace and Prithvi Vilas, Jhalawar

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If last year was all about temples, this holiday is the year of the palace. After bidding a fond farewell to Bundi, an hour’s drive took us to Kota which is, for the most part, just as described in one guide book – ‘a grimy industrial city’. Steel plants loom large and spew out polluting clouds of smoke. But like so many other Rajput towns, Kota has an old town surrounded by what remains of the city walls. Inside lies a massive palace, just a tiny part of which is open to the public. We are the only visitors. A courtyard leads into a surprisingly plain durbar hall (where the maharajah would have held public ceremonies) which contains, as the small printed guide puts it, ceremonial items and other things. The other things range from the sublime to the ridiculous – a life sized model of an elephant, howdah seats, coins, coronation chairs and much else. Next door is a much more beautiful hall with columns, murals, walls embedded with hundreds of tiny mirrors which would have reflected back the light from hundreds of candles lit in the evening, and a highly decorated throne which belonged to the Maharajah of Kota. There is a picture gallery, which seems to comprise mainly pictures of the royal family playing polo or hunting tigers (such a stereotype) and a room full of stuffed animals (maybe the ones in the photos, who knows). The next door we come to is locked. We peer at our guide sheet which suggests the best four rooms are yet to come. As if by magic, a tiny woman in a pink sari arrives with a set of keys. She presents us each with a cup of chai, unlocks the door and leads us to other rooms which are indeed full of the best decorations. Painted frescos are studded with intricate watercolours, protected from the elements behind glass and still as colourful as the day they were drawn. The maharajah’s bed chamber, complete with silver bed, is the best of the lot, with a balcony overlooking the river. The steel works do slightly mar the view, however.

Leaving the palace, it’s a two hour drive to Jhalawar where we are staying at Prithvi Vilas, the home of the Maharajah of Jhalawar. It was originally built as a hunting lodge but has been extended over the years and is now a comfortable and extensive home. The outside is Rajput in style, built of red sandstone with white and yellow decoration, but the inside is like stepping into an English Edwardian country house run by the National Trust. Our suite of rooms is larger even than at Bhanwar Vilas, and runs along half of one side of the house, leading out onto our private terrace with marble sofas and steps down. We are greeted by Maharaj Rana Chandrajit Singh himself, who joins us for meals, and exhorts us to treat the place as if it were our own home.

Lunch is served in a dining room full of display cabinets full of family porcelain and glass, with the heads of deer and other trophies all round the walls. The indoor staff of three or four retainers produce an array of dishes for lunch, reappearing every two or three minutes to offer more. It would be very easy to overeat here! The cook is the third generation from the same family to serve here. In total, there are 20 staff, including a resident priest and two office staff. It takes a while to adjust to this, and while it would be wonderful to have someone to do all the cleaning, we’re not sure we’d really want to be waited on hand and foot the whole time.

The pleasure of our new surroundings and the accompanying senses of relaxation are jolted by our driver. As we arrived, he took an urgent phone call from his father saying his brother had been hurt in a car accident in Ajmer. He reappeared a couple of hours later to say his brother’s injuries were so severe he was not expected to live. He left us the keys to the car and the company credit card, and set off for a long journey on public transport to Ajmer. We heard this morning that his brother had indeed died, but we think he did least get there in time. It is a horribly sobering reminder of the human loss and misery behind all the wrecked cars and lorries you see by the side of the road when driving in India.

Gin and tonics are taken before dinner in the salon, most enjoyable, but regrettably David decides his stomach is not having a good time and retires to the room while Sara dines in splendour with H.E.



The fact that we are without a driver the next day is not actually a problem as David is recovering from his bout of you-know-what and we spend a lazy day on the upstairs terrace. Two new guests appear. We visit the family temple in the grounds, where the resident priest is busy sweeping (he also processes around the house twice a day, presumably blessing it) and the step well in the grounds, where an extended family is living with their cattle. More G&T before dinner, and over dinner we hear stories of the intricacies of the doings of the Rajput royal families and their less than happy relationship with Mrs Gandhi during her years in power. She may have had a respectable international press but she was not much loved by many in her own country.

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