Our 2 day stay at Khem Villa, Ranthambore

Our next stint after Jaipur was at Ranthambore . This place is widely popular for its tiger reserve and thats the reason we were there too! We stayed at a place called Khem Villa, a family owned property run by a couple who were truly passionate about what they were doing and loved connecting with their guests ..

Pics enroute to Ranthambore

Everything here was natural , the eco tourism kind. This place had 3 kind accomadation the standard rooms , tents and villas and we opted for the tent. Inspite of the chill weather which made me fell ick at the end of the day .. I still don' regret having choosen the tent .. It was fun in a different way :)

The campus in which Khem villa was had its own beautiful garden with papaya trees (from which we got to eat papaya for our breakfast next morning) , mari gold and other beautiful flowers whose names I have no clue about.

The food served there was totally home grown right from the vegetables to grains .. The place also had a quaint library with a small collection of books on various topics.

The evening saw all the guests and the owners of the property get together over a camp fire, that was warm - literally (with the weather getting too cold in the night) and the owners connecting with the guests.

That's when we came to knw that there was a tiger visitor to the property couple of days ago to a far off lake adjacent to the property . Ah! wish we were there then ..

In between all of these happened our safari into the forest , which deserves a post by itself :)

It was time for Khanna ..

I have always loved good food and authentic food always excites me though I am not a great eater. After hearing loads of things on a good note about Rajasthani food especially their generosity in adding pure ghee to food items I was not surprised when my Thali (the traditional plate containg all the food items) was placed before me.

With my guide's suggestion we went to this really popular restaurant (Lakshmi Rajasthan Bhandar or more fondly called teh LMB Restaurant by the localites) that served traditional rajasthani cuisine.

I loved the churma(it was a sweet dish). Dal Baati and Churma are delecacies that are prepared only on special occasions. I was feeling more than full by the time I could taste jus a couple of dishes. I loved the taste thou' .

One interesting fact I came across was that since Rajasthan was a dry land and since they had to store food items for a long time as the land was also not suitable for vegetaion , most of their food preperation was out of dal and other pulses that can be stored for a very long time.

On the way back after a sumptuous meal, we planned to visit a store selling blue pottery goods and somewhere close to Jal mahal I saw a series of shops selling memerobilia. When I got there to select a few articles to take back home I found a man selling namkeens that was so aristically arranged :) He infact refused to let me take a picture of it, but later he was sweet enough to voluntarily came up to me asking if I wanted to take a picture :)

This land is indeed very colorful ;)

Jaipur - Day 1 - Amber Fort

After a short stint at the Hawa Mahal we drove to Amber fort. On our way to the fort we came across a few shops selling savouries (these looked so different compared to the usual ones we get across various other places in India). From our guide we came to know that these were the local specialities and were found only near Amber fort and not even in other parts of Jaipur. Then how can I miss not sampling them ? It tasted similar to the usual ones except that they were big made :)

The walls of the Amber fort are bulit similar to that of the Great wall of China. There are 3 ways through which you can reach the fort - an elephant ride, drive up or trust your own legs and walk up the slope. I opted to take the elephant ride and we entered the fort sitting on top of an elephant , jus' the way the King or Queen would have years ago - It did feel really majestic :)

If your planning to take the elephant ride to the fort be sure to be there on time as there are no elephant rides after 1pm and the demand for the ride is high as told by our guide. We were fortunate enough as we didn't have to wait for too long.

The architecture of Amber fort is a mixture of Rajput and Mughal architecture using red sandstone and white marble. All the paintings that you would see here are made out of natural colors.

This is the Kali temple in the fort where the king prayed before any war.

The mirror work is extraordinary in the Sheesh Mahal which according to its name glows with thousands of pieces of mirror. The moment a ray of sun or moon falls on these mirrors, the entire palace begins to radiate.

There were 12 seperate house like thing with hall, bed room etc..as the king had 12 queens. Since one of the queen was from Kashmir and availability of saffron was scarce. The king set up a garden where he could grow saffron but in vain.


The two big utensils are used for frying and the long pave where these are placed are sometimes used to let elephants fight with each other while preparing them for war .

There was a Cafe coffee day as well where you could get replenished after hours of walking around the fort.

Jaipur - Day 1 - Hawa Mahal

After enjoying our sumptuous breakfast it was around 9 ish when we planned to tour the pink city and Ms.Nidhi was our guide for the day. She was very friendly and it was more like travelling with a friend .

Our first visit was to the Hawa Mahal - Wind Palace .It is one of the most captivating piece of work by the Rajput rulers. In earlier days the women of the Royal family were not allowed to mix with the general public but that did not keep them away from the day to day happenings . The court room had special chambers for the women to watch the day to day proceedings .

Hawa Mahal was the window to the outer world for the royal ladies :)

Our stay at Jaipur

For our first 2 days of stay in Jaipur we opted to stay at the Rajputana Sheraton . A beautiful hotel run by the Sheraton group whose exteriors have been designed to look like a palace. My dad had a membership with Sheraton group so we got this really cool offer to stay there at half the cost and avail numerous other offers on food and beverages :) . Their staff were really very courteous , well I did really have to make a special mention about it .

The room looked so welcoming as we entered . Me being me so wanted to crash into the bed but had to wait for a lil while before I could click pics before its all messed up. I loved the interiors too, me thou' not a great fan of Sheraton hotels I do have to agree that they have some really nice rooms :)

This is one of the really nice hotels I've stayed at and one that has made a great use of technology wherever possible .. I was surprised to see that the TV volume lowered automatically as I picked the phone to call the reception.

My favourite place in the hotel was this courtyard kinda area which was open to sky and has a lot of small shops selling various ethnic stuff signature to Jaipur, Rajasthan.

Chennai - Jaipur

It was one of those winter mornings ( first week of Jan) where one can expect a sure flight delay on those flights heading to the capital (Delhi) due to the heavy fog. We weren't too suprised when our Jet Airways flight got cancelled . We were given an option to choose a connecting flight via Bengaluru , but we opted to fly Jet Lite as it reached Delhi earlier and we also wanted to try out their service.

To compensate the price difference Jet offered us to use their Lounge :) . On reachiing Delhi we drove to Jaipur , which was a 4hr. journey .. For lunch we stopped at the famous Haldirams Mithai (sweet) shop in Gurgaon en route Jaipur . Treating our tounge to the yummilicious jaelebis , pani poori, roti and subji (side dish)

I don' really have a sweet tooth I'm more of the savouries person but this place has made me fall in love with sweets like never before :)

We reached Jaipur around 6 in the evening and checked in at Rajputana Sheraton where we had booked our stay for the next couple of days .

My list of places to see before I die..

Wonder why i've been doing a lot of thinking about travel and new destinations , may be it's the hangover after reading a lot of travelogues and watching travel channel for hours together or may be jus' due to the excitement of my upcoming Jaipur trip :)

Jamshedpur
California
Los Angeles
Las Vegas
New York City
(The whole of USA)
Mumbai
Goa
Coorg
Jaipur ( will soon be striked off the list)
Chandigarh
Rio de Janerio
Spain
Singapore
Thailand
UK
Salzburg
Swizz
Canada
Maldives
Ibiza
Gran Canaria
Dubai
Coorg
Kumarakom
Munnar
Turkey
Disney Land
Delhi
Taj Mahal
Paris
Egypt
Venice
Shimla

I'm sure there will be a lot more places that will add to the list in coming times :). The striked ones are those that I've already been to.
What is your list of must visit places??