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Saturday 16 July 2011

Day 160: Bundi Step Wells (07/07/2011)

After visiting the Bundi City Palace we headed further up the mountainside to the fort that looms over the valley. It is, of course abandoned and is falling evermore into disrepair. There are few visitors here and we were alone in both the palace and the fort. I say alone, but there was the ever present troop of Macaques and Langours, occupying different corners of the complex but sharing a single source of drinking water.

The fort is a massively fortified and made even more impressive by the rocky outcrop on which parts of its walls are built. The citadel stands alone on the summit like a squat, upturned coffee cup. The palace within the fort has an elegant series of gates, fearsomely equipped with dozens of large spikes to dissuade attacking elephants from ramming them open. A Mimosa tree grows in the courtyard under which it is easy it imagine soldiers shading themselves in the midday heat.

Most impressive are the step wells. Immaculate squares, constructed with vertical sides and narrow stone steps running down each wall, they collect the monsoon torrents, the steps making the water accessible for drinking and bathing regardless of the depth. The water at the bottom – for most are empty with deeply cracked beds – can only be described as British Racing Green. Frogs multiply and somehow fish have found their way into them despite the elevation of over 1,200m. Monkeys sit on the steps enjoying the shade of the walls and the cooling waters. Their young frolic in the edges and adults use the steps as a springboard from which to leap the improbable distances to the branches that overhang the wells.

As with the Hall of Audience in the palace, this is no longer a human realm. A vast fortune could be spent to refurbish the fort and the crumbling palace and a magnificent hotel it would make. But it would probably detract from the eerie atmosphere of decay and fading majesty that the buildings project today, which paradoxically is both its strongest suit and the cause of its ultimate but none too imminent demise.

Before the end of the day we walked through the vibrant fruit market to the Nagar-Sagar or Queen’s Tank. A staggering 46m deep, it descends in perfect geometric order, ten stories below ground and looking down into it from behind the barriers induces more than a little internal tightening. Sadly it is a receptacle for rubbish or worse, as so many of the town’s numerous step wells are but it is no less awe inspiring for this disrespect.

The next day, after breakfast, a large white cow appeared at the door and stood in the opening for ten minutes. This, apparently, is not unusual for Bundi. Some chase them away but most reinforce the routine by feeding them in return for good karma. Old Daisy happily wrapped her blue tongue around half a loaf of bread before enthusiastically taking it from Clare’s slightly nervous hand. When her ruminations were over, Mukesh gently pushed her back into the street and she wandered off to complete her breakfast rounds at the other havelis in the street.

The motorbike milkmen made their rounds all day, decanting milk from the giant brass containers that are chained to their rear pannier and crying that indecipherable call common to newspaper sellers and rag and bone men the world over..

After breakfast I experienced the first symptoms of an overheating brain. I proved spectacularly incapable of persuading the taxi driver that we did want to go where we said we wanted to go and not where he wanted to take us. I should have walked away sooner- and I have a vague recollection of Clare tugging at my shirt sleeve at one point – but by this time the red mist had descended. The incessant blaring of the high pressure air-horns favoured by Rajasthani drivers was making my ears ring and ratcheted up my brain temperature by degrees until my eyes were hard boiled. Eventually Clare led me away. Somewhere between the madness overwhelming me and the lifeless body of Mr Taxi falling limply to the floor, I regained my composure sufficiently to take my medicine and submit voluntarily to the strait jacket.

Opting instead for a tuk-tuk, the delightful Raj ferried us first to Kipling’s out of town retreat where he wrote some of ‘Kim’ and the denouement of ‘The Jungle Book’, inspired by the tigers that roamed the hills in those days.

After this we peeked over the wall at the magnificent cupola laden Sarg Bagh mausoleums where the ashes of twelve of Bundi’s maharajas are interred.We couldn't get in because the gate was locked. Raj explained that government officers employed to administer monuments have a two tier hierarchy all of their own. City monuments pay 135 rupees per day. In the country it is a measly 55 rupees.

Not enough, apparently, to get the key holder out of bed today.

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