Bundi is best

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If somebody asked me where they should go to stay in Rajasthan, I'd tell them to go to Bundi. Qualify this with the fact that I've spent about 24 hours there, at the absolute skinny-monkey-tail-end of the tourist season. Qualify it some more: the questioner needs to be someone else that wants to get away from tourist-packaging, tourist-marketing and glitzy palaces that have been restored to a movie-set pristine-ness. Bundi is 25 k or so off the main N-S motorway (a motorway,incidentally, which is at least as good as if not actually much better than any we have in NZ, although there are fewer cows wandering across the 4 lanes in NZ, and you are unlikely to see an elephant parked in a signposted "lay bye". And, just while we're on the subject, lay bye makes a lot more sense than layby. You lay around for a bit and then you go bye.)
The road to Bundi is narrow, splintered and pockmarked as if it had been hammered with a hundred thousand cannonballs but it runs through charming villages where water buffalo lumber into ponds and bullock-carts puddle around the potholes.
Bundi itself is a small town, clustered into a fold of some sizeable rocky hills. The streets of the old town are narrow, too narrow to be navigable by car, jeep or tuktuk although that causes no hesitation in the minds of the average local driver. We took a tuktuk ride back from the market which was far more exciting than anything you'd meet at a funpark, if slightly less safety-padded. It was a hold-on-tight-and-pray-a-bit experience, like all such rides, with the shops and crumbling buildings whirling past kaleidoscopically.
In fact Bundi is one of many Indian towns that has perfected the art of crumbling gracefully in stone without actually falling down, although I'm sure that buildings do collapse sometimes. This is an earthquake zone as is all of Northern India.
The palace, perched above the town, is threatened with restoration- so here is a message to the Rajah.
Dear Sir- or Your Majesty, if you prefer-
If you're thinking of smartening up your palace- think again! What you've got now is the most atmospheric, impressive palace that we've visited on our tour of Rajasthan. Okay, it's a bit smelly in places and the bats and the monkeys are a bit of a pest. (Thanks! by the way, for the loan of the sturdy bamboo canes for chasing away those simians. Luckily, we didn't need them.) But the unrestored miniature wallpaintings are truly exquisite and no matter how good a craftsperson the restorer may be, he or she is bound to ruin them. Just pop down to your colleague the maharajah of Udaipur's palace if you don't believe me: yes, the place is impressive and glitzy, just like when Bond was swishing around doing Octopussy- but do you really want things to be quite that manicured and OTT? And also by the way, the kids in the street outside are just like any kids anywhere and have not been corrupted by tourism into asking for money, pens and chocolate. Which is a very good thing and you might like to think about employing a few of them to take when you pension off the knowledgeable but slightly doddery retainers you've got up there now. The truth is , what you've got at Bundi is truly majestic, your Majesty- so please keep it that way. Just prop up the bits that are falling down and maybe give the latrines a bit of a hose down and a splash of Dettol.
Yours very gratefully,
two kiwi visitors
(yes, that's right, our cricket team are just the try-hards at best. No need to point it out.)