The palace, the fort and the royal monuments
- Taragarh
- Traditionally 1354; 20-30 minute climb
- Garh Palace
- Grew from the early 1600s
- Chitrashala
- Mid-18th century, Rao Umed Singh
- 84-pillar cenotaph
- 1683, Rao Raja Anirudh Singh
- Sukh Mahal
- Early 18th century; Kipling, 1887
Climb Taragarh at first light
Why: the star fort on the ridge was begun, by tradition, in 1354, and is now half ruin, half forest.
When: at dawn, when mist fills the valley, the macaques are still sleepy and the Garh Palace turns gold below you. Be down by nine, before the heat.
- How: the climb is steep and takes twenty to thirty minutes. Wear real shoes, carry water in a closed bag and take a stick.
- Inside the walls: find the Bhim Burj, the great round gun bastion where the cannon called Garbh Gunjan once stood, and the reservoirs cut into the rock to survive a siege.
- Take a guide: the paths fork constantly through thorn scrub and fallen walls, and a local guide knows which ones lead somewhere.
Walk up through the Garh Palace
The way in: the steep ramp and the Hathi Pol, the elephant gate, then up through the hall of public audience and the Chhatra Mahal.
A village of pavilions: the palace grew over two centuries from the early 1600s, each ruler adding a wing on the slope.
- When and how: go as it opens, with a guide, and ask whether the Badal Mahal is accessible that day.
- A book by many hands: Rao Raja Ratan Singh began it, Rao Chhatrasal added the Chhatra Mahal, and later rulers kept building until the Chitrashala crowned the top in the eighteenth century.
- Kipling's view: he thought it looked like the work of goblins rather than men, and in the dim stairways you'll see his point.
Spend an hour in the Chitrashala
The one thing to see: a garden gallery built for Rao Umed Singh in the mid-eighteenth century.
- The murals: turquoise and green scenes of Krishna, the Ras Leela, the monsoon, processions and hunts.
- How: take a guide who can read them panel by panel, never touch the walls, and never use a flash.
- Look up: at the ceilings, which most people forget.
See the cenotaph of eighty-four pillars
Where: on the road south of town, the Chaurasi Khambon ki Chhatri stands on a high platform.
- What: a double-storeyed pavilion held up by eighty-four carved pillars, built by Rao Raja Anirudh Singh in 1683 for Deva, his foster brother.
- Look for: carved elephants and riders as you walk around the plinth.
- When: late afternoon, when the pillars cast long shadows.
Find Kshar Bagh, the royal cremation garden
Where: a walled garden near Jait Sagar.
- What: the domed chhatris, the cenotaphs, of Bundi's rulers and queens, many plinths carved with horses, elephants and processions.
- Why: shaded, quiet and rarely visited. In the soft light before sunset it is one of the most peaceful places in Hadoti.
- Manners: behave as you would in a churchyard.
Sit at the Sukh Mahal, Kipling's pavilion
The building: a small summer palace on the bank of Jait Sagar, built in the early eighteenth century. In 1887 Rudyard Kipling was put up here.
- The real point: the lake, with lotus after the monsoon, egrets in the shallows, and the hills behind turning blue at dusk.
- Read first: our journal piece on Kipling in Bundi.
Stepwells, tanks and lakes
- Stepwells and tanks
- More than fifty
- Raniji ki Baori
- 1699, about 46 metres deep
- Dabhai Kund
- An upside-down pyramid of steps
- Nagar Sagar Kund
- Twin tanks in the bazaar
- Nawal Sagar
- Lake with a Varuna temple
Walk down Raniji ki Baori
What: the queen's stepwell, built in 1699 by Rani Nathavati, dropping about 46 metres through carved arches and pillared landings.
Look for: stone elephants on the walls and Vishnu's avatars near the entrance. Each landing is cooler than the last.
- When: late afternoon, when light slants down the steps, or first thing, before anyone else is there.
- Sit a while: on a pillared landing, where women once rested their pots and traded news.
- Feel the walls: at the top and lower down. The difference in temperature tells you why the town built more than fifty of these.
Photograph Dabhai Kund
What: one of the largest stepped tanks in Bundi, an upside-down pyramid of zigzag steps.
- Why: not carved like the baori, but its geometry is extraordinary.
- When and how: come early or late, when shadows draw every step, and bring a wide lens.
- With children: they love the patterns. Keep them away from the edges, which have no railings.
Watch the morning at Nagar Sagar Kund
What: a pair of twin stepped tanks in the bazaar, still part of daily life.
- What you'll see: women filling pots, pigeons on the steps, old men sitting in the sun.
- Manners: watch quietly, and ask before you photograph anyone.
- Why it matters: this is where Bundi stops being a monument and becomes a town.
Walk around Nawal Sagar at dusk
What: the square lake in the heart of town, with a small temple to Varuna, the water god, standing half in the water.
- After the rains: when full, it reflects the palace and fort walls upside down.
- In the evening: the whole town seems to come out to walk its edge. Join them, buy a cup of tea and watch the lights come on up the hill.
The blue lanes, the bazaar and the painters
- Best walking time
- Before nine
- Route
- Palace gate to Sadar Bazaar
- Liveliest bazaar hour
- Evening, when jalebi is fried
- Temple aarti
- Evening, Charbhuja Nath
Get lost in the blue lanes
What: below the palace, a web of lanes between houses washed white and indigo. Every lane has a different blue.
When: walk from the palace gate towards Sadar Bazaar before nine, when the walls are cool and the light is soft.
- With our guides: they know the doorways with painted Ganesh figures, the small shrines and the courtyards where you might be invited in for tea.
- Why blue: people say indigo in the limewash was once associated with Brahmin households and helps keep houses cool and insects away. Today the colour belongs to everyone.
- Wedding paintings: beside front doors, with Ganesh, elephants and the couple's names, painted when a son or daughter marries.
- Plan it: our page on heritage walks explains how we arrange them.
Browse Sadar Bazaar
A farm-town market: Bundi serves the farms of Hadoti, so the bazaar sells what local people need: steel pots, bridal bangles, turban cloth, seeds, spices and sweets.
- What to do: wander, watch the bargaining, and buy a few bangles or a length of cloth for the joy of it.
- When: the evening, when sweet shops start frying jalebi, is the liveliest time.
Visit a miniature painter
Why: Bundi gave its name to a school of Rajput painting famous for rain clouds, lotus ponds and round-faced women.
What you'll see: some artists show you how they make squirrel-hair brushes and grind mineral colours.
- Who: our guides know which painters are serious artists and which are souvenir sellers, and we never take commissions.
- Go slowly: sit for an hour, watch a single eye drawn with a brush of a few hairs, and ask about the stories being painted.
- If you buy: buy because you love the piece. A good artist will never mind either way. Read our page on miniature painting first.
Find the Charbhuja Nath temple
What: a temple in the old city to Charbhuja Nath, a four-armed form of Vishnu. A working neighbourhood temple, not a monument.
- When: the evening aarti, the lamp ceremony, a lovely, noisy affair of bells and conch shells.
- Manners: dress modestly, remove your shoes and follow local worshippers. Our guide to temple etiquette has the details.
Eat like Hadoti
- Breakfast
- Kachori with chutney and sweet tea
- Lunch
- Dal baati, gatte ki sabzi
- Winter
- Maize rotis, jaggery, white butter
- Haveli kitchens
- Mostly vegetarian
- Coriander flowers
- Late winter, around February
Start the day with kachori
What: the deep-fried pastry of the region, stuffed with spiced lentils, eaten hot with a sharp chutney and sweet tea.
- Bundi versus Kota: Kota's kachori is more famous, but Bundi's sweet shops hold their own.
- How: go with a guide who knows which stall has the busiest queue of locals, and eat it standing in the lane, the way everyone else does.
Eat a home-style Hadoti thali
Ask your haveli kitchen: for dal baati, the baked wheat balls with lentils and ghee, and gatte ki sabzi of gram-flour dumplings in yoghurt gravy.
Also on the plate: seasonal greens, buttermilk and, in winter, maize rotis with jaggery and white butter.
- Vegetarian and very good at it: most Bundi haveli kitchens. Some will let you watch, and our haveli cooking class page explains how.
- Waves of food: lunch is the main meal, with a dal, two or three vegetables, a dry dish, rotis or baati, rice, pickles, papad and a sweet.
- Table manners: eat with your right hand if you'd like to try. Your host will keep refilling your plate until you cover it with your palm.
Walk the coriander fields in February
Coriander country: in late winter the fields around Bundi and Kota are white with tiny coriander flowers.
- The scent: on a warm afternoon it is extraordinary.
- How: a short drive into the farmland with a guide, a village stop and a cup of tea with a farming family, one of the simplest and best afternoons in the region.
Festivals and the life of the town
- Kajli Teej
- Bhadrapad, usually August
- Bundi Utsav
- Kartik, October or November
- Kartik Purnima
- Lamps on the Chambal at Keshoraipatan
- Diwali
- Lamps on parapets, fireworks over the lake
- Dates
- Lunar; we confirm each year
Kajli Teej in the monsoon
When: in the Hindu month of Bhadrapad, usually in August. The date follows the lunar calendar, so we confirm it each year.
What happens: the goddess is carried in procession, swings hang from trees and a fair fills the evenings.
- What women wear: green and leheriya, the wave-patterned tie-dye of the monsoon.
- What it celebrates: a women's festival marking the reunion of Shiva and Parvati and the arrival of the rains.
- Look for: ghevar, the honeycomb-like sweet soaked in syrup that appears only in this season, and hands freshly patterned with mehndi, henna.
The Bundi Utsav in Kartik
When: each year in the month of Kartik, around October or November. Dates move with the moon, so check before you plan.
- What happens: a few days of processions, folk music and dance, crafts, turban-tying contests, traditional games and fireworks.
- Combine it: with Kartik Purnima, the full moon, when lamps float on the Chambal at nearby Keshoraipatan.
Diwali in a small town
A family affair: lamps along the haveli parapets, rangoli in the doorways, sweets passed between neighbours and fireworks over the lake.
- Why here: gentler and more intimate than Diwali in a big city.
- Say yes: if your haveli family invites you to join their puja. Read more about Diwali in Rajasthan.
See the Great Boundary Fault at Satur
What: a National Geological Monument of India not far from Bundi, where you can see the line where two great rock systems of India meet.
- Who for: a niche stop, but guests who love landscapes find it fascinating.
- Why: it explains why Bundi's hills look the way they do.
Hills, birds and the monsoon gorges
Birdwatching on the lakes
When: the cool months, November to February.
- What you'll see: on Jait Sagar and other lakes, herons, egrets, cormorants, kingfishers and, in good years, migrant ducks and waders. Peafowl call from the hills at dawn and dusk.
- How: go early with binoculars and a flask of tea, and walk the bank slowly.
- No expertise needed: our guides can point out the common species.
Chase the monsoon waterfalls
When: July to September, after heavy rain, when waterfalls appear in the gorges and ravines and the dry hills turn a startling green.
- Who goes: local families drive out on rainy weekends to picnic beside them.
- How: they are seasonal and sometimes hard to reach, so go with someone who knows the road and the river after rain.
- Safety: never wade or swim in a fast monsoon stream, however calm it looks.
Bundi after dark
Dinner on a haveli roof
The best table in Bundi: on a haveli roof, with the palace lit on the hill above and the town's lights below.
- What to do: order a slow thali, watch the bats come out and listen to temple bells and wedding bands.
- Music: we often ask our haveli hosts to arrange a local musician for an hour. See our page on rooftop dining.
Watch the palace light up
When: as darkness falls, the Garh Palace and the fort walls are lit.
- Where: from the edge of Nawal Sagar or a haveli roof, the whole hillside glows, and the town looks most like one of its own paintings.
- How: sit, have a cup of tea, and let it happen. Our guide to Rajasthan's best sunsets lists more places like this.
Day trips from Bundi
- Kota
- Forty minutes
- Keshoraipatan
- About an hour
- Ramgarh Vishdhari
- Forests north of Bundi
- Menal and Bijolia
- On the road to Chittorgarh
- Jhalawar
- A long day; better overnight
Kota and the Chambal
What: the region's other Hada palace, with painted rooms in the related Kota style and a museum of hunting paintings, beside the broad Chambal river.
The city: busy and modern, but its old quarter rewards a day.
- Kota Doria: the weavers at Kaithoon nearby make the finest checked cotton in Rajasthan.
- A family rivalry: Bundi the elder and Kota the richer kept it up for three hundred years, and seeing both palaces in two days makes that history vivid.
- A softer night: Kota has bigger heritage hotels with pools, after the havelis of Bundi.
Keshoraipatan on the Chambal
What: the temple of Keshav Rai, built by Rao Chhatrasal of Bundi in the seventeenth century, above the Chambal river.
- At Kartik Purnima: pilgrims bathe and float lamps at dusk.
- On an ordinary day: a quiet riverside temple with a lovely view, and a good half-day out.
Ramgarh Vishdhari Tiger Reserve
What: the forests north of Bundi, notified as a tiger reserve in 2022.
- Set expectations: its tigers are few, so don't come expecting Ranthambore.
- Come for: wild, quiet hills, dry forest, birds and the knowledge that you are in a corridor tigers use.
- How: we arrange drives with local naturalists when the forest department allows them.
The temples of Menal and Bijolia
Menal: a group of medieval temples on the edge of a gorge, with a waterfall that pours after the monsoon.
- Bijolia: more old temples and a twelfth-century rock inscription of the Chauhans.
- A detour: together they make a lovely stop on the drive west to Chittorgarh.
- Best after the monsoon: the waterfall is in full flow and the gorge is green. In dry months it shrinks to a trickle, but the carved temple towers are worth the stop any time.
Jhalawar and Gagron
- What: Jhalawar has a palace and the water fort of Gagron, one of the UNESCO-listed Hill Forts of Rajasthan, set where two rivers meet.
- How: a long day from Bundi, better as an overnight. Read our Jhalawar guide.
Putting it together
Those single-night guests are usually the ones who write afterwards to say they wish they had stayed longer.
Day plans: our Bundi itinerary sets out one-, two-, three- and four-day versions.
Seasons: our guide to the best time to visit Bundi explains how the season changes what you can do.
- Early morning
- Monuments
- Midday
- A long lunch and rest
- Late afternoon
- Water and lanes
- Dusk
- A rooftop
- Where to sleep: read our honest guide to luxury hotels in Bundi.
- On the map: Bundi fits naturally between Jaipur and Udaipur.
- On a journey: it is a highlight of our offbeat Rajasthan journey with Chittorgarh and Dungarpur.
- The region: read our guide to Hadoti for the bigger picture.
- Who will love Bundi: travellers who enjoy art, quiet, early mornings and wandering without a plan.
- Who might not: anyone who needs a big hotel, a long menu of restaurants and nightlife, or who is short of time and wants the famous names.
- For them: we often suggest a single night as a break on the road between Jaipur and Udaipur.
Small things that make Bundi easier
Start every day early: the best light, the coolest air and the emptiest monuments are all before ten.
Rest at midday: shops close for a long lunch, and the town is drowsy from one to four. Join it.
- Wear shoes with grip: palace ramps, stepwell steps and the fort path are steep and polished smooth.
- Hide food and bottles: near the palace and fort the macaques are fast and bold.
- Ask before photographing people: especially women at the kunds and in the lanes.
- Carry small notes: many shops take phone payments, but the old town still likes cash.
- Say no politely: to anyone steering you to a particular shop. Our guides are paid never to take commissions.
- Dress modestly: in the old town and in temples, shoulders and knees covered is the local norm.
