BUNDI - FEBRUARY 11

First thing we do is having breakfast on the terrace of the hotel. The view is awesome, to the city below and the fortress (fort and palace) above.

The service is not as awesome though. We have to give the order several times in order to get the food and believe me, it is nothing extraordinary. We just ordered things like pancakes and coffee or tea with or without milk. The waiter gets mixed up and we start losing our patience. Since Jocelyne has already paid for full breakfast, it seems they just don’t want to give us anything. Anyway, we get something to eat at last and second thing we do is moving out of this hotel. It is really overpriced. The positive thing is the nice decoration; the negative thing is that there is not even warm water for everyone. After the breakfast incident, we are happy to leave. In the meantime, we have booked two rooms in a nearby hotel, Haveli Katkoun, it is somewhat less expensive and the rooms are even nicer.

After that, we first visit the palace, built in the 16th and 17th century. Many carvings..,

marbles, ..murals...........painted ceilings.

Many miniature paintings are in no good shape anymore. Many parts of the palace are a bit run down, we feel there is no as much money as in other cities where historical buildings are renovated. Still, it is a very nice place to visit and rather quiet.

The Hall of Audiences is like a terrace with a marble throne overlooking the courtyard that leads to the palace entrance. There are great views over the blue city .from many parts of the palace. .We don't walk up to the fort, as it starts being hot, so we go back to the city, sightseeing, shopping (the girls are crazy about jewellery!) ... meeting many nice people, kids coming back from school, ..

more cows .then we visit the market again where we buy a few things for our picnic in a nearby park. Then we visit Raniji-Ki-Baori, a huge step-well near the market, Still many beautiful murals to be seen everywhere....................

We meet Jassi and we drive to a village outside of town. On the way, we stop at a beautiful lake...... and then, we find the village, Thikarda. The village is specialized in pottery. Well, we don’t see that much pottery there, but there is a wedding going on, so we “participate” and we must tell the people are very happy to see us. It is said that having foreigners at a wedding brings luck. I hope! As usual, lots of music, dances, kids running about. The village is very pretty,.. but we can feel the difference with the wedding we saw yesterday. It is more “simple”, but still very funny and friendly. It is almost dark when we decide to drive back to town. We have dinner on the roof terrace of Shivam Guesthouse and it is terribly cold. The house is run by the mother and daughter and they are both very efficient and so friendly.