A former fort, an old palace: Explore the rustic charms of eastern Rajasthan

Bundi Palace and Taragarh Fort at the top of the hill. — Photos: AMAR GROVER

From the battlements I savour the view. To my left, Kalisil Lake’s waters shimmer in a soft haze. In front, beyond sloping thickets of shrubbery lies a pretty patchwork of verdant fields with dark hills edging the horizon.

Lowing buffaloes and the occasional tinkle of goats’ bells break the stillness. In this eyrie I’m also spoilt for choice: to linger on the curtained day-bed in one bastion or wallow in the other’s jacuzzi.

Barely 15 years ago such options would have been unthinkable here. Ramathra Fort, a 17th-century hilltop fortress in India’s Rajasthan secured by crenellated walls and rounded bastions, had stood uninhabited since the late 1960s. From then for around three decades, a local villager was tasked with checking it over each day.

Eventually, a caretaker was installed to thwart treasure seekers, a common issue with venerable properties like this where the prospect if not fantasy of discovering hidden loot remains irresistible. There was still no electricity or running water; in his words it was a “simple life” echoing that of the region’s surrounding off-grid villages.

Says owner Ravi Raj Pal, a direct descendant of a branch of the royal family that built it, “a hotel venture like this was the only way to preserve the fort’s heritage”. Ramathra, located in the town of Sapotara, opened to guests in late 2007. Its private sections – now home to Pal and his family – needed considerable refurbishment and modern plumbing while the guest wings were more or less completely rebuilt.

Today it’s a charming hilltop haven, a beacon of tranquillity in a relatively little-visited tract of eastern Rajasthan. The place feels satisfyingly remote; Jaipur, the state capital, is only 160km away but the drive takes four hours. It’s also a window on “old Rajasthan” and its seemingly time-forgotten villages where daily life unfolds to an ancient pulse.

Ramathra Fort was originally built in the 17th century.

Uttam Singh, its original resident caretaker, showed me around the neighbouring village one morning. Here in rural India women still marry in their teens and large families remain the norm. The fields were lush with winter wheat and mustard. Almost every household kept a buffalo or two, while some had cows and goats; all penned at night because of prowling jackals and even the odd leopard. Some modest houses maintained traditional roofing made from pampas-like grass, fewer still had heavy “slate” roofs.

For all its profoundly rustic simplicity, Uttam noted that even here things had developed. There’s grid-elecricity and water pumps for irrigation.

Two or three decades earlier the roads were terrible and few locals owned bicycles let alone scooters or motorbikes. “Sometimes even curious jackals appeared at (Ramathra’s) front gates looking in ...” and Uttam had to shoo them away. Leopards are still occasionally sighted in the surrounding hills from the fort’s very walls and jacuzzi.

After pausing for tea in a village home, we strolled on across a pretty ridge with sweeping views of Kalisil, the huge elongated lake created by a narrow bund, or dam, near the foot of Ramathra. More fields nibbled its ebbing shoreline and they too would soon be lush with spring millet, sesame and beans.

Yet the property’s best and wildest excursion lies in the hills to the south.

Most of this rugged Daang Plateau comprises the Kailadevi Wildlife Sanctuary, technically part of the buffer zone of Rajasthan’s famous Ranthambore National Park. But here, unlike Ranthambore, you’ll probably be the only tourist.

My guide was Hetram Sain whose forebears had all worked for Ramathra’s noble family; old ways die hard.

Off we trundled in Pal’s open-topped jeep, quickly climbing into the Daang on an unmetalled track, several of which connect the stark plateau’s isolated hamlets and villages.

It’s no easy life up here. Rudimentary homes with tiny solar panels generating bulb-only electricity underline the hardships. Summers are brutal and outside the monsoon water is scarce. Just about every field of note is encircled by stone walls topped with thorny acacia to thwart rampaging wild boars.

Sain took me to a series of pretty sinuous gorges that penetrate the plateau by as much as 7km. During the monsoon when the Daang’s forests erupt in greenery, their stepped watercourses and cliffs boast spectacular waterfalls. We strolled alongside their rims and hiked down to hidden shrines, temples and streams with only the occasional goatherd for company. They’re also home to elusive wildlife: wolves, bears, leopards.

Bundi Palace viewed from the Taragarh Fort path.

We paused at a point where three months earlier a camera trap set by Pal’s son had caught a tiger; later he showed me the clip. But Sain’s most prized sighting in decades of wandering was a once-only caracal.

Heading back at dusk the jeep’s spotlight caught striped hyenas and jackals, shy blue bull (antelopes) and skittish chinkara gazelles.

Leopards would have to be for another day.

Small town wonder

Proximity makes Ranthambore the next likely destination in this region but I headed on to Bundi. Former capital of a princely state, Bundi today is an affable yet under-visited slice of small-town Rajasthan – the kind of place where dairy farmers zoom in from the countryside on motorbikes loaded with fat pails of milk.

Originally walled, heaving bazaars now cluster around a surviving gateway. Nearby, the 50m-deep 17th-century Raniji ki Baori is a compelling example of traditional step-well architecture with its decorative archways and intricate mouldings.

A dairy farmer carrying his milk pails the not-so-traditional way in Bundi.

Bundi’s main draw is a splendid palace complex looming over its old quarter and artificial lake. Visiting Bundi in 1888, the writer Rudyard Kipling memorably described it as one men “build for themselves in uneasy dreams – the work of goblins rather than of men”. Higher still cresting the hill above is a rambling part-ruined fort, the original stronghold of the state’s medieval rulers.

Still privately owned, for decades this enigmatic but neglected palace stood strangely aloof and underutilised. Seemingly open only for furtive visits, notions of it becoming a luxury heritage hotel eventually stalled.

It’s now managed by a local charitable trust which has stabilised the insidious decay and spruced up its interiors.

Several extensive apartments, halls and courtyards lend a window onto the extraordinary, sometimes whimsical, lives of maharajahs. A lofty masonry swing still stands in one courtyard while elsewhere traces of frescoes and floor-to-ceiling mirror-inlay just about survive. In its innermost recesses (and if you’re feeling bold), dark corridors and rambling stairwells penetrate long-decayed half-forgotten sections.

A farmer with his goat herd in Daang Plateau.

Just one area – the Chitrashala – remains in government hands.

Overlooking a formal garden, its walls gleam with superb frescoes depicting courtly life and scenes from the life of Lord Krishna. These are some of the finest examples of the “Bundi School”, a style of miniature painting fusing Rajput and Mughal elements.

In the afternoon I strolled up to Taragarh, the original hilltop fort, on a steep cobbled path. Perched in trees and on battlements, langur monkeys glared at my passing. Taragarh’s muscular perimeter walls remain largely intact and within its 80-odd hectares lie stepped water tanks and a couple of eerie part-ruined mansions with quadrangles.

Various bastions lend bracing views of town and its two lakes. Down to the east you can even see Sukh Mahal, the modest royal guesthouse where Kipling stayed and now a small museum. Altogether it’s a fine spot. I’m just not sure about his goblins or uneasy dreams.

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Travel notes

How to get there: From Kuala Lumpur, make your way to Jaipur first, then book a car service from the city to Sapotara. The journey will take about four hours. AirAsia flies direct from KL to Jaipur each week; there are also other airlines that fly direct from KL to the city. Alternatively, contact a travel agent to plan your trip.