5.30 am - Woke up early. Had tea, dressed and kept our bags ready.
8.00 am - Went to the restaurant to get some breakfast. Saw a guy in the lawn area, whom we had also seen at Arya Niwas in Jaipur during our stay there.
Ordered omellettes, toast with butter. After a long wait, we were first served with omellettes, another long wait brought the toast. We had to ask the waiter to bring us butter, meanwhile the omelletes and toasts got cold!! The guy from Jaipur also brought back his toasts a couple times. Apparently, the service at this place stinks. We were the only 2 tables to be served too!!
As we were checking out, I saw this guy again with his wife/girlfriend trying to communicate with the staff. I realized they needed help, so went to assist them. Meanwhile, they had also recognized us. They wanted to rent a cab or a private car to go to Bundi. I told them that the road was not that great as we had been on that road and they may be better off taking a train. They had the same problem as us - too much luggage. I conveyed their message to the staff and left it at that. I did not want to start bargaining the price for them. Sarawan was ready to leave, so we left.
Paid Rs 1872 total (Rs 1000 for the room, and 872 for snacks, dinner and breakfast)
9.45 am - Left Hotel Pratap Palace for Bhilwara - our 18th district!
Excellent 4 lane highway. Covered the distance in no time. After the highway, we were on a 2 lane for about 10 kms, that too was a good road SH 12.
NH stands for National Highway
SH stands for Short Highway
Landed up at the MLV College - Bhilwara University - and as I was taking pictures, I heard someone saying "excuse me, excuse me" and as I turned, I saw this lady asking me if I was Prof so and so? I told her no but I am just a tourist looking for the famous sites of Bhilwara, if she can help. She introduced herself to me as Dr Rama Jain - Botany Prof (I took her pictures with her permission). She left me in a few minutes as she was looking for someone and mistook me for her. Meanwhile, some students came by to talk. I asked them what was Bhilwara famous for. They said, it is known as "Vastra Nagar" - City of clothes - mostly, they were quiet and just stared. Someone told Pavan that he could find some local books from the Pustakalya - bookstore - and accompanied us there. But on reaching there, we found out that the Bookstore opens at noon on saturdays and that the only book "Bhilwara Dagha" was out of stock.
11.30 am - We dropped that person back at the MLV College and went to Harni Mahadev Temple.
12.13 afternoon - Left Harni Mahadev temple, very disappointed. No books, no papers, no sight seeing. There were lots of beggers at this temple, little kids begging breaks your heart. I bought a few biscuit packets and distributed some among these kids rather than give them money.
Left Bhilwara without any good photos and made a note of visiting this place again with more time and information. Maybe we shall focus on Bhilwara Suitings and go from there.
12.36 pm - Left for RajSamand - our 19th District.
I have been fascinated by the license plates in Rajasthan. Jaipur has the honor of having RJ14 numbers, I see RJ30 on the vehicles in RajSamand......I need to research all the Districts' numbers, and put those together.
2.12 pm - Arrived at and photographed the big overhead sign welcoming us to RajSamand.
2.20 pm - Reached RajSamand Lake. The Lake is behind a temple, and we found frescos on the walls. On going through a lane, and dodging some vendors who wanted to sell us food to feed the fish, we reached the Lake. it was very big, and I saw a feeble old woman also selling fish food. I bought a plate from her and handed it to Sarawan Singh to go feed the fish. He was very happy to do that, the religious person that he is.
I saw a woman washing her clothes using a "danda" a cricket-bat-like piece of wood to beat the dirt out of clothes. Took a lot pictures of her. I joked with her that women get angry at their husbands and then beat the hell of these poor clothes. She could not stop laughing at that.
On our way out, Pavan started chatting with a local purohit who gave him a lot of information about RajSamand. He said that next time when we go there, we should plan on staying in the temple, and there is another bigger temple, which is like a five star hotel. He had a lot of stories to tell and asked us to stop by again to talk to him another time.
Rajasthanis love to talk, they have a lot of stories to tell if you have the time.
2.40 pm - Left RajSamand Lake for Ranakpur which is at the border of Pali and RajSamand.
Pali - our 20th District.
4.53 pm - Reached Ranakpur Hill Resort. All the hotels that we saw as we were driving into Ranakpur looked gorgeous. Sarawan Singh brought us to Ranakpur Hill Resort. The hotel looked very new, very spacious with a beautiful lawn and a swimming pool. The lawn had wicker furniture - tempting the guests to eat out. We were shown rooms starting at 1800 and the next one at 1500. We let them know that we would try something else unless the price is right. Finally, I was shown a room that was beautiful with curtains - ceiling to floor - covering 2 areas in the room which were like large bay windows - actually 2 people can sleep on each of these windows, as they were almost 3 or 4 ft by 15 ft. The bathroom was very nice with shower curtain etc. The rate quoted to us was Rs 1200 after some calculated discounts. Our room opened into the lawn and so was an attractive bargain. I noticed one thing, if the hotel was full, they did not care if you stayed thete or not, but if they had some vacancies, they would offer you a good deal. We normally reached any hotel after 5 or 6 pm and they did not expect to many guests after that. We never had any bookings except the first hotel in Jaipur, and at Arya Niwas, you would probably never find a room unless you have advance bookings.
We ordered some snacks and sat in the lawn by the pool (soup & sandwich for Pavan and cutlets for me. Pretty good stuff. So far so very good! The only down side was, - you could hear voices in our bathroom from next door very clearly. As we were eating, we saw an Indian couple with a small child. Looked they were important guests, later we found out that they owned the place. The husband later gave Pavan his card - RaghuRaj Singh - he said they had recently acquired this hotel, that is why it is still kind of new and not so full.
We ordered room service at night - sizzlers with beer, pepsi and mineral water. Had a few cups of tea and uploaded all the pictures, charged the batteries and settled down for the night.
We talked with Sunder, Payal and Sagar and the cell phone signal kept getting lost, so I had to go outside the room, in the bargain, some mosquitoes found their way in. The All Out plug-in-unit and the Finit spray do wonders in getting rid of them.
Overall, the hotel experience was very good. Highly recommended.
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