Delhi to Mandawa

Up at 5.30am as we had and early start to the day leaving the hotel at 7.15am to head to the bus station. It took over an hour to get out of Delhi, the traffic was chaotic. The bus was not too crowded to start with, but we picked up many passengers along the way and by the end it was so crowded that you could hardly move. The trip through the Rajasthan countryside was very scenic. We passed through small towns where the bus picked up and set down passengers and at one point we had a driver change. The bus ride was scheduled to take 7 hours but we ran late and it ended up taking 8 hours. It was a good journey, we had the air conditioning on (the windows open), and the roads at a couple of places were rough,

After arriving in Mandawa we checked into our hotel, the Mandawa Haveli which was once a rich merchants house. It is over 200 years old and has 2 floors of rooms off a central courtyard and a large rooftop area where they have a restaurant with great views over Mandawa. The whole Haveli is covered in beautiful and intricate frescos. Badam gave us an orientation tour of Mandawa where he showed us some of the local handicrafts such as bangles being made from lacquer and a cobbler with his leather shoes. We met up on the rooftop for a pre dinner drink with the group where some of the employees played music and danced. Catriona, rich and Marcus were all dragged up to dance which was quite fun. Dinner was a buffet in the rooftop restaurant  of the haveli.

In the morning we had breakfast in the haveli before setting off on a walking tour of Mandawa. We wandered through the markets and visited a Hindu temple, then a well which was the water source for Mandawa until it dried up around 10 years ago. Then it was on to see a few of the many havelis Mandawa is famous for. Most of them are in bad need of restoration but from what we saw they must have been magnificent in their day. We marveled at their detail and some of them date back over 200 years. Mandawa was on the silk road trade route and the havelis were owned by the traders. The region declined in importance with the opening of the sea routes and the coming of the East India Company.

 

We ate lunch at Bungli restaurant and had some traditional foods from the area and a banana lassi. After lunch we wandered around Mandawa then Catriona had an Ayurvedic massage before we set off with Terri, Mike and Badam to look for birds. We saw our first ever wild peaocks flying around. We also saw a beautiful kingfisher with blue wings and a red beak. Dinner was at Monica's restaurant then back to the haveli to get ready for our trip to Bikaner. We heard some loud music outside and went to investigate, there was a wedding procession going past. It was the groom's party and the groom looked bored but the men were having fun dancing as the procession moved along the street.