A palace that grew down a hill
Up on the ridge first: for their first centuries in the valley, the Hada rulers lived in Taragarh Fort on the ridge above the town.
Mughal service: in 1569 Rao Surjan Hada surrendered Ranthambore to Akbar and joined the Mughal nobility. Bundi's rulers became imperial commanders and brought home money and a taste for painting.
- Rulers
- The Hada Chauhans of Bundi
- Palace begun
- Early 1600s, under Rao Raja Ratan Singh
- Built over
- About two centuries
- Entrance
- The Hathi Pol, the elephant gate
- Above it
- Taragarh Fort on the ridge
- Down the hill: from the early 1600s the court moved down. Rao Raja Ratan Singh, who served Jahangir, is usually credited with beginning the Garh Palace in its present form.
- Room by room: each ruler added rooms, terraces and gateways, so the palace grew like a hillside village of pavilions rather than a single planned building.
- Kipling's dream: when Rudyard Kipling visited in 1887 he described it as the kind of building men see in uneasy dreams. Our piece on Kipling in Bundi follows his visit.
- Painted throughout: murals survive in several parts of the palace, but the two that matter most are the Badal Mahal and the Chitrashala.
Where the Bundi style came from
The Chunar Ragamala: a set of ragamala paintings made in 1591 at Chunar, near Varanasi, by artists trained under Mughal masters, for the Hada court then serving the emperor there.
The earliest dated work: museum scholars treat it as the earliest dated work of the Bundi school. It was later brought to Bundi and became a model for Bundi ragamalas for two centuries.
- Mughal polish, Rajput heart: the school took refinement from the imperial painters but kept a Rajput feeling: devotional, romantic and full of love for nature.
- Paper and walls: the same painters and their descendants worked on paper for albums and on the plaster walls of the palace.
- A sister school: in the eighteenth century a related school grew at Kota, the other Hada capital, famous for its hunting scenes.
- Scholars argue: about dates, artists and attributions. We leave that to them. In front of the wall, what you need is to notice the rain, the lotus and the eyes.
The Badal Mahal, the cloud palace
Its age: usually dated to the early seventeenth century, making it older than the Chitrashala by more than a hundred years.
The ceiling: a painted dome of petal-shaped panels with peacocks, musicians and figures of Krishna, among the finest early murals in Rajasthan.
- Closer to Mughal painting: the style here is finer and more formal than the later Chitrashala, closer to the imperial painters the Hadas had seen.
- Not always open: the Badal Mahal has opened and closed for conservation over the years. Our guides check before every visit.
- Worth asking: on a good day our guides can show you rooms most visitors never see. Ask, and accept a no with good grace.
The Chitrashala, a garden of paintings
The patron: Rao Raja Umed Singh came to the throne in a troubled time, when Bundi had been fought over and briefly lost. He won it back and ruled until about 1770.
A garden palace: he built a small palace around a courtyard garden at the top of the Garh Palace, and his painters covered its walls and ceilings with murals.
- Also called
- The Ummed Mahal
- Patron
- Rao Raja Umed Singh
- Date
- Mid-eighteenth century
- Plan
- Galleries around a garden court
- Allow
- At least an hour with a guide
- A wandering ascetic: Bundi tradition says he gave up the throne in later life and lived as a wandering holy man.
- Painting went on: his successors added more, and Rao Raja Bishan Singh, who signed the treaty with the East India Company in 1818, was a notable patron of the arts.
- Separate entry: the Chitrashala sits apart at the top of the palace and may be ticketed separately. We check on the day.
- The back gate: from the back of its court, a steep path climbs to Taragarh. Our Chitrashala guide walks the palace gate by gate.
What the walls show
Krishna and the gopis
- The hero of the walls: the blue-skinned god who grew up among cowherds in Braj, stealing butter, playing his flute and hiding the clothes of the bathing gopis.
- Why: the Bundi rulers were devoted Vaishnavas, worshippers of Vishnu and his avatar Krishna, and their painters returned to these stories again and again.
The Ras Leela
- What to find: a great circle of dancers on a wall or ceiling, Krishna dancing with the gopis on an autumn night and multiplying himself so each believes he dances with her alone.
- What it means: in devotional terms, the soul's love for god. In painting terms, a wheel of colour and movement.
Krishna lifting Govardhan
- What to find: Krishna holding up Mount Govardhan on one finger like an umbrella, sheltering villagers and cows from the storm sent by Indra.
- Why it fits Bundi: in a town where the monsoon is everything, a god who shelters people from the rain was a natural favourite. The same pose is worshipped at Nathdwara.
Ragamala and barahmasa
- Ragamala: paintings that give each musical mode a picture and a mood, a direct descendant of the Chunar set.
- Barahmasa: the twelve months of the year, each with its weather and its longing, from the heat of summer to the first rains.
The court, the hunt and the town
Processions: rulers on elephants, courtiers on terraces, musicians and dancers.
- Hunts and elephant fights: tigers and boar in thick forest, a reminder that this was a warrior house as well as a devout one.
- Bundi itself: some panels show the city with its palace and lakes. Stand in the gallery and look at a painting of the town below your feet.
How to recognise a Bundi painting
The colour: deep greens, turquoise, blues and creams with touches of red and gold. No other Rajasthani palace has quite this cool, watery palette.
The landscape: banana trees, mango groves, lotus ponds full of fish, rivers and birds. It is the landscape of Hadoti itself, greener than the desert west.
- Colour
- Turquoise, green, blue, cream, red, gold
- Landscape
- Lush, wet, full of trees and water
- Faces
- Round, small chins, almond eyes
- Sky
- Dark clouds, lightning, silver rain
- Feeling
- Longing, devotion, delight in nature
- The faces: Bundi women have round faces, small chins, large almond eyes and a slight, serene smile, often in profile.
- The sky: dark clouds edged with white curls, zigzags of lightning, rain in silver lines. Bundi painters loved the monsoon more than any other school in Rajasthan.
- The gestures: emotion lives in the hands, not the faces: a hand to a cheek, a glance over a shoulder, a figure leaning out of a window at a storm.
- The animals: peacocks, elephants, deer, monkeys and fish, painted with obvious affection.
Reading a wall, the way our guides do
Find the edges: most scenes sit inside painted borders, and big walls are divided into rows like pages laid side by side. Read one panel at a time.
Follow the sequence: where a wall tells a long story, the episodes often run in order, and the same figure can appear several times in one frame.
- Find the most important person: size and position show rank. Gods and kings are larger, higher or set under a canopy. Krishna is easy, because he is blue.
- Look at the sky: clear sky for a calm day, dark cloud and gold lightning for the monsoon and longing, a moon and stars for a night scene or the Ras Leela.
- Look at the hands: a raised finger or a hand to a cheek carries the emotion. Once you notice it, the walls start to talk.
- Look for writing: some panels carry short inscriptions in Devanagari naming a raga, a month or a story. Your guide can read them.
What most visitors miss
The ceilings: everyone looks at the walls and few look up. Ceilings and the undersides of arches are painted too, and have often survived better because no hands could reach them.
The small life: fish in the lotus ponds, monkeys in the trees, a cat watching birds, a servant asleep in the corner of a court scene. Bundi painters loved small things.
- The town in the paint: find a panel showing Bundi with its palace and lake, then step to the edge of the court and look out. The shape of the town has barely changed.
- The garden itself: sit for a few minutes and take in the whole court: green plants, painted walls, sky above. It was a pleasure palace meant to be enjoyed slowly, ideally with music.
- The colour of the hills: on the drive in, notice how green Hadoti is after the rains. The painters were not exaggerating.
Murals beyond the palace
Painted havelis: some old merchants' and priests' houses in the lanes below the palace have painted rooms of their own. Haveli Braj Bhushanjee, now a heritage hotel, has murals and miniatures in its rooms.
Wedding paintings: beside front doors in the blue lanes, families paint Ganesh, elephants and the names of a couple when a son or daughter marries. Our list of things to do in Bundi explains them.
- Living painters: a few artists in town still paint in the Bundi tradition on paper and silk, grinding mineral colours and making fine brushes.
- Kota: forty minutes away, the Garh Palace of Kota has painted rooms in the related Kota style. Our Kota guide has more.
- Further afield: compare the frescoes of Shekhawati, painted by merchants rather than kings, and the murals of Orchha in Bundelkhand.
Kota, the sister school
The family split: in the time of Rao Ratan Singh, the territory around Kota was given to his second son, and by 1631 Kota was a separate state.
The rivalry: Bundi the elder and Kota the richer kept a family rivalry going for three hundred years, and their painters competed too.
- The hunt: Kota painters became famous for dramatic hunting scenes in dense jungle, with rulers on elephants and tigers leaping from the trees.
- Compare them: seeing both palaces on one trip shows how one school of painters grew in two directions. Bundi looks to love and rain, Kota to the forest and the chase.
- Getting there: an easy half day from Bundi, combined with the Chambal river and the old city.
Fragile walls, and how to look after them
Lime plaster: the murals are painted on lime plaster, and they are fragile. Damp, salts in the walls, smoke, sunlight and the oils from hands all harm them.
Never touch: however tempting the detail. The oils in your fingers stay on the pigment.
- No flash: flash fades pigments over time. Photography without flash is generally welcome, but rules change, so we ask on the day.
- Don't lean: never rest a bag or your back against a painted wall.
- A soft torch: a small torch with a warm, low beam, used briefly and from a distance, helps in darker corners without harming the paint.
- Conservation: work has been carried out in parts of the palace in recent decades, and rooms open and close as it continues. You will see restoration of varying quality.
The best hour and season
As the palace opens: the garden court's light is soft, the stone still cool, and you have the gallery almost to yourself for half an hour.
After Taragarh: climb the fort at dawn and come down into the Chitrashala through its back gate just as it wakes up.
- Late afternoon: warm, low light is lovely too, though keep an eye on closing time.
- October to March: the comfortable season for exploring the steep palace. Our best time to visit Bundi guide covers each month.
- August: the month the paintings make most sense, with real clouds over the ridge, peacocks calling and lotus in the ponds. It is humid, and some rooms may close.
- Festivals: Kajli Teej in the monsoon and the Bundi Utsav in Kartik fill the town with colour. We confirm dates each year.
A palace morning, hour by hour
Dawn, Taragarh
- The climb: walk up to the star fort at first light, when the valley is still in mist and the monkeys are sleepy. Carry a stick and keep food out of sight.
Opening time, the Chitrashala
- Come down through the back gate: reach the garden gallery as it opens, with the soft light and the court to yourself for half an hour.
- With your guide: read three or four panels slowly rather than glancing at all of them.
Mid-morning, the main palace
- The rest of the Garh Palace: the Chhatra Mahal and its elephant brackets, the hall of public audience and, if it is open, the Badal Mahal.
Late morning, down to the town
- Through the blue lanes: walk down to Raniji ki Baori, the queen's stepwell of 1699, then back to your haveli for lunch and a long rest.
How to plan a Bundi visit
Allow time: two to three hours for the palace and the Chitrashala with a guide, more if you also climb Taragarh.
Take a guide who can read the walls: the difference between pretty colours and understanding the Ras Leela is enormous. Our guides never take commissions.
- Wear good shoes: the entrance ramp and some stairways are steep, dark and polished smooth. Our accessible travel guide explains what we can arrange.
- Where to stay: small heritage havelis under the palace walls, such as Haveli Braj Bhushanjee. Our guide to Bundi's heritage havelis compares them.
- Day by day: our Bundi itinerary lays out two or three days, and our offbeat Rajasthan journey links Bundi with Chittorgarh and Dungarpur.
- Go deeper: our miniature painting page explains how to tell serious Bundi painters from souvenir shops.