INDIA – Day 9 -Jaipur to Mandawa – Revisited…….

Well travel has been pretty a No Go for a few months now.  I have been lately looking back at older Blogs and photos and reminiscing about travel.  We went to India in November 2018 and what a great trip!   Here is a Revisit of Day 9 of that trip, I would love to go back to India and see more and do more.  Maybe one day………….

Day Nine –

Wow the time here in India is going so fast.  We start our trip home tomorrow night, so hard to believe this time has gone so quickly.  We left today at 915 for Mandawa  Here are some photos on our drive to Mandawa, the drive took about 5 hours.

We arrived at our destination about 2 p.m. and we stayed at the Mandawa Desert Resort .  Oh. My. God. this place is incredible.  All the hotels we have stayed at have been terrific and I didn’t think they could get any better but this is by far my favourite hotel.  Absolutely stunning, the whole place.

Before we went to our rooms though, we were hungry and the restaurant closed at 230, seeing as how it was after 2, we decided to eat first, get room later.  The buffet was okay, I actually have had better buffets but it hit the spot.

We went to our room and the walk to our room was like walking through a village.  All individual “mud” huts all decorated.  I just loved it, did I mention that?

So then we go into our room………….When you entered, there was a small area with a desk and bench to the left of the door.  To the right, you walked down a few circular stairs and there was the bed.  You kept going around the bed and did almost a complete circle to get into the bathroom, which was huge.

We had some time to unpack and check out the place.  We walked up to the pool and sat there for a bit with some of the others.  Some went into the pool for a quick swim before we headed out again.

At 4 p.m. we headed to Mandawa, a city of 25,000 people, to see the Havelis.  These are houses that are painted and are normally of architectural or historical significance.  Amit had a guide take us on a walking tour and we went into two different Havelis.  Beautiful places but getting a little rundown.  I think some of these buildings are now neglected by the absentee owners which is sad.  Below are photos of the two Havelis we went to.

 

We walked through some more of the city and I loved the look of the streets.  There were not many people around either so it was possible to get some good street shots.

Then we ended up going to the shops area and our guide took us to his house and up a steep set of stairs to his shop.  He and his family make scarfs, saris, bedspreads etc and he wanted to show and sell us some of his family’s work.

He had very beautiful items which I enjoyed looking at but when the selling started, I decided to leave.  I followed Clint, Paul and John downstairs and back into the streets to look around and to find somewhere that sold beer.  We wanted to take some back to the hotel.  We did indeed find a spot and we purchased rum and/or beer for later in the evening.

We got back to the hotel and our whole group met in the common area to play Catch Phrase and drink our drinks.

After about an hour or so, all the group went into dinner except for Paul, Clint and I.  We were not hungry enough to eat again.  Paul and Clint played some ping-pong and we drank our beer and ate some Masala Potato Chips and waited for the others to come back.  They were only gone about an hour.  More visiting and some of  them played ping pong again.  Then time for bed, long day tomorrow and our last day.

We had a wicked thunder and lightning storm in the night and lots of rain.  First rain we have had since we arrived in India.  The weather has been around 30 Celsius give or take and always sunny and warm.