CASTLES IN THE SAND

Garry Marchant
gmarchant@questbay.com
1st August 2001

The room was palatial, with four poster bed and splashing fountain. The decor was a lavish display of Indian opulence, rich with marble and kaleidoscopic colors and patterns. With retainers always at hand, service was impeccable, and the daily feasts were fit for royalty.

But the plumbing leaked, the electricity was intermittent, and the halls were dusty.

"In this country, we provide ambience, not amenities," the maharajah-turned-innkeeper explained with a shrug. In Rajasthan, India, rural castle hotels more than make up for any mild discomforts with a lavish sense of style and showmanship. Think of Basil Fawlty in turban and jodhpurs.

Not so long ago, the maharajas and maharanis of the dusty state just south of Delhi lived in regal splendor in magnificent forts, palaces, castles and sandstone cities scattered across the desert. But with Indian independence a half century ago, they lost their privileges. Like Britain's dispossessed royalty, many deposed maharajahs have turned to inn keeping.

Rajasthan has more heritage hotels than any other Indian state, although the quality varies considerably. A few, operated by the Oberoi or Taj chains, are luxury hotels, ornately decorated and furnished with antiques and artwork. Huge paintings or photos of early imperious maharajahs, clad in gaudy costumes and flaunting full flowing facial hair hang from public rooms. Some of the remote palace hotels are rundown and shabby, but still exotic, and worth the experience.

For groups arriving in these palaces, the reception can be royal. Caparisoned camels carry guests into the castle's floodlit courtyard where flutes wail, horns blare and drums roll the "Royal Welcome." With a great show of pageantry, retainers with huge, curling mustaches and costumed like ancient Rajput dandies with elaborate turbans drape guests' necks in brilliant orange marigold wreaths, place auspicious tikas (vermillion dots) on their foreheads and serve them iced drinks.

Servants then lead guests through manicured grounds where peacocks fan their tail feathers, snake charmers lure cobras out of their baskets and mahouts pose beside elephants with ears and trunks painted with vivid floral patterns. A lavish feast awaits guests in the dining room.

That is what checking into a maharajah's palace hotel is like for some. My own experience was somewhat different. When my vintage Ambassador Nova, India's replica of a 1950s British Morris Oxford, pulled up at the castle gates, there was no one to be seen. Walking up the steps, I found a man dozing in a corner, barefoot, with his turban on the ground beside him. I nudged him awake and, sleepy-eyed, he looked around for the registration book. Traveling off season, I was the only "prince" (or guest) in the palace. He finally found me a dusty room and sent for some staff to make the beds and conjur up a (delicious) curry dinner.

Elsewhere, it was more organized. In the low rise, sprawling Rambagh Palace in Jaipur, the first princely home to become a hotel, and still one of the best, long, cool marble corridors run past rooms that, in one of the world's most crowded countries, are expansive enough to house several village families. Crystal chandeliers, paintings and murals decorate the large, lavish suites.
In the 400-year-old Samode castle near Jaipur, the ornate Durbar Hall (maharaja's court), patterned like an Oriental carpet from wall to ceiling, was the main setting for the British television production of M. M. Kaye's novel The Far Pavilions. Today, guests are served welcoming cocktails there. Every room in Samode is decorated differently. Suite 209 is as large and lavish as a boudoir in a seraglio, with sculptured white marble arches, delicately carved woodwork, ornate alcoves and a maharajah-sized bed. The small marble fountain in the middle of its sitting room is cool and relaxing as a desert oasis. It is also a hazard for the unwary, the clumsy and the somnambulist, as I discovered one painful morning when, half awake, I stumbled into it and limped around the castle for the next few days.

Stays are leisurely at palace hotels, like being at a beach resort without the beach. In these grand edifices, the building itself is a destination, although most palaces are located near villages that are worth seeing to experience Indian peasant life in the raw. Hotels arrange camel and horseback rides through dusty desert roads, picnics, sightseeing excursions, even hot-air ballooning. Some have swimming pools and lawn tennis courts.

The rambling, largely unrestored 240-year-old Castle Mandawa is set in a village in the heart of the Shekawati area, famous for its highly decorated havelis (merchants' homes), whose crumbling outer walls were the canvases for fantastic paintings. In the 18th- and 19th-centuries, wealthy merchants competed to have the most elaborately decorated homes, a form of "keeping up with the Singhs," and the results where quite startling. One afternoon I wandered through the ancient painted town, viewing Hindu gods and goddesses, hunting scenes from the British Raj, Rajput princes parading on elephants, steam trains, and the Hindu God Krishna lolling back like a rock star in a stretch limousine.

Another day, next to the Samode palace, I followed a staircase of 376 steps leading up the mountain to the 400-year-old ruins of a hilltop fort that once protected Samode. It was a steep, but scenic climb, and as I stopped a few times to catch my breath and admire the view, villagers going to a nearby temple passed me by. The long-abandoned stone structure is a classic fort with parapets, loopholes, turrets, bastions and battlements. The watchman, a self-appointed guide, pointed out the best viewpoints over the valley, and the machicolations -- holes in the floor over the outside walls that were the soldiers' toilets.

Back at the Samode palace gate, two village boys, claiming to come from a long line of artists, displayed distinctive Rajasthan-style miniatures -- traditional paintings, including slightly risque works featuring preposterously proportioned Rajput girls in see-through blouses.

The Sariska Palace Hotel, India's version of an African game lodge, is set at the entrance to Sariska Tiger Reserve, 335 square miles of dense, dry forest, streams, steep ridges, valleys and hills. The turn-of-the-century building, once the Maharaja Jai Singh of Alwar's royal hunting lodge, is Indo-art deco with Saracenic touches such as arched, carved doorways with scalloped edges. A few stuffed tigers linger in the lounge and dated black-and-white photographs of hunters posing before supine felines decorate the rooms and hallways.

At 6am and 4pm, the hotel provides open-topped Maruti Gypsy jeeps with driver/guides for wildlife viewing in the tiger reserve. Dirt tracks lead through the hot, dry bush thick with thorn trees, acacias and scrubby palms where spotted deer, four-horned antelopes, large blue bull antelopes and other ungulates roam. We approached within yards of wild boar crusty with mud, porcupine, mongoose, civet cat and large groups of two kinds of monkeys: ill-tempered rhesus and gentle brown langurs. Peacocks, India's national bird, perched in the trees, flew past the jeep, or fluttered across the road trailing their iridescent tails behind them like operatic capes. However, even though the number of tigers in the sanctuary has increased in recent years, even with two game drives and a walk though the bush, I spotted none of the elusive jungle cats.

Dining is an appealing part of any stay in a palace hotel, with lavish feasts of Mughal food served in outdoor courtyards or ornately decorated dining rooms. In Samode, one evening, we dined on a rooftop patio, with the mountain and fort I had just visited outlined behind us in the dusk. In Sariska, dinner was served on the open-air porch in the rear of the hotel, overlooking the grounds where earlier maharajahs staked live goats to entice tigers from the surrounding forest for the evening's entertainment.

Service is attentive everywhere, with liveried retainers serving an array of superb, if somewhat rich food. Exotic dishes are slow cooked with gee (clarified butter), and highly, but expertly, spiced. A light lunch in the Rambagh Palace one afternoon was sweet basmati rice with pieces of lamb and cashew nuts flavored with saffron and mint and served with raita (yogurt with grated cucumbers and spices). Musicians in turbans and dhotis seated cross-legged at the end of the room played the taula (drum) and the tanpura (a kind of sitar), providing the appropriate, subcontinent background music.

One evening meal at another palace included a buffet of tender grilled chicken the color of old mahogany, morsels of mutton cooked in fresh tomatoes and a blend of spices, lamb curry in a cashew nut paste, and a creamy kebab of boneless chicken with cream cheese, lemon juice and green coriander. Vegetarians feasted on jumbo prawns marinated in yogurt with chili and turmeric and roasted over a coal fire; plates of vegetables, rice and naan (Indian bread, somewhat like a dry tortilla). Dinner ended with coffee and sweet Indian desserts served under the stars.

Hotels always provide ethnic song-and-dance shows, even when only a single, unappreciative guest present sit in the dining room. One pleasant evening, squatting musicians played exotic, cacophonous percussion and wind instruments while pre-adolescent girls, like Gypsies with flowing dresses and scarfs, twirled about this lone diner's table. It was Rajasthan's version of Mexican mariachis or the get-the-guest Hawaiian hula show where entertainers drag defenseless tourists up on stage to humiliate themselves.

But with no baksheesh (tip) forthcoming, the entertainers soon decamped, and I had the castle to myself. I sat out under the velvety-black desert sky in the cool night air, sipping a "chota peg" (a short measure) of Indian whiskey delivered by attentive, costumed waiters. And I appreciated that the maharajah's of old really had a good thing going, faulty plumbing and all.

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Rajasthan can be toured using New Delhi or Jaipur as a base. There are frequent flights to Jaipur for those who don't want the long drive. The preferred time of the year to visit is from October to March. The rest of the year, it is too hot.

Visas are compulsory for most visitors to India.

A car and driver arranged through the tourist office is $45 a day. In Delhi, telephone 3320005/8. More substantial and comfortable air-conditioned Toyotas are available from most hotels for from $100 to $170 a day.

Prices for hotels vary widely, with Oberoi and Taj Palace hotels charging international rates of about $200 double a night, depending on the season. Moderate hotels such as the Samode Palace and Neemrana are from about $50 to $120 a double, while some of the more remote palaces are $50 a day or less.