Haveli accommodation

Haveli’s are the well off merchant’s homes from centuries past.  The merchants would travel the silk route and bring home treasures to decorate their homes, basically to show off their wealth (quoted from Lonely Planet).  Most are in a state of ruin as the upkeep is expensive.  The haveli normally has two huge courtyards, one for men and another for women enclosed in one walled property.  The few that are maintained are open to the public as hotels or for sight seeing the paintings and architecture.  Today the havelis are normally co-owned by the sons of a family handed down over the generations, poor daughters miss out again.

Hotel rooms surrounding the courtyard

We have chosen havelis where available for our accommodation as they have a special feel about them.  You can just imagine being there in by gone days.  In our haveli at Mandawa (our first night on the road) the rooms did not have numbers but names.  Our room was “Nagesh” which is Lord Krishna.  We were told Lord Krishna had 16,000 girlfriends.  Jim thought this was great, I thought it was wishful thinking he can’t cope with one let alone 16,000.

The little window on the right where I viewed the wedding 

The haveli was amazing, shame the bed was rock hard, the water cold and the wedding (see previous blog) went till early hours of the morning.  Thank God for phenergan! I think I’m addicted as I have had two in a week.  The dinner was a buffet which we don’t like as a rule but it was super yummy.  There was a dish of desert beans and berries.  Looks like grated cardboard but was good, can’t think of anything to compare to.

Love the door step

 It is such a shame we can’t download more photos to show you but the internet is so slow it nearly stops when you try to download images.  We are not complaining, we are thankful we have internet at all but it is hard to describe all the wonderful things to look at.