Kaurali and the Maharaja’s Palace

Day 7 – Drive to Kaurali & visit the Maharaja's Palace

From Bharatpur, we drove several hours to Kaurali.  As we made our way into the village, we saw the typical signs of village life.  Repair shops, construction and materials and vendors selling produce and snacks.  The 5th picture below is a street vendor selling panipuri (water balls).  Also note the camel cart awaiting a load of bricks.

We stopped in at our guest house for the night, which happened to be the current Maharaja's estate.  He rents it out as a guest house at times, and our group was able to enjoy all of his staff's hospitality.  Each room of the estate was slightly unique.  They were all different shapes and sizes with different decor.  My room had two beds behind red curtains, a receiving area with a couch, and a bathroom containing a desk.  Curiously eclectic.  My windows opened up to the back garden, within perfect earshot of the roosters and peacocks in the morning.  Outside my room was a long hallway with interesting reclining chairs.  The armrests were meant for resting your legs upon. Curiouser and curiouser.

Once we had settled in, we were off to ride some camel carts across town to visit the Maharaja's old palace.  Here are a few pictures of us on camel carts.  I also captured some video of the ride into town, which I'll upload later.

The Maharaja's old palace in Kaurali is no longer a residence.  The Maharaja's family returned it to India at the time of India's independence. There was some unique artistry demonstrated in this building.  Many of the paintings are original and several hundred years old.  They still have bright colors due to the fact that the paints were made with crushed gems.

The monkeys were apparently a concern.  In the picture of the little boy above, there's a man in the background holding a staff.  I later learned that he was to follow us for our protection.  He's a monkey wrangler for the grounds.  He and a few others watch after the monkey traps, and make sure that visitors aren't attacked by monkeys.  Here are a couple of the buggers:

We made our way up to the roof of the palace, and witnessed some battle kites and kite runners (yes, like the book).  The boys saw us way up high, and maneuvered their kites to fly at us.  We finally left the roof when one of the kites wrapped around one of our members.  If you don't know about battle kites, the danger is that they have glass on a portion of the string so that they can cut the strings of other kites.  Not fun to have one of these things attack you.

After the kite incident, we descended back to our camel carts, and rode them back through town to our own palace for the night.  On the way, we stopped in the middle of the village to look at some of the shops.  A few ladies bought some bangles and we were off again.

One of the differences we noticed in this town was just how friendly the people were.  Children were calling "hallo" after us constantly, and smiling.  Some would even wink.  Many of the adults would wave.  We were not set upon by hawkers trying to bully us into buying their trinkets for "only 300 rupees, okay 40 rupees.  Come on, 20 rupees!"  The town of Kaurali seemed somewhat uncorrupted by the tourist traffic, and it felt like more of a pure experience.

I must say, I didn't want to leave Kaurali so soon.  It was beautiful and restful staying at the Maharaja's estate.  Kind of like staying at a rich uncle's family estate in the country.  A very, very rich uncle.  It was restful, and quite a departure from the hustle and bustle of the India we'd seen so far.  But, all things must come to an end, and after just one night, we moved on.

Next day, we had a few surprises in store for us as we tried to make the 150 km journey to Jaipur.