By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
It was a breezy winter day, on tea break, Tanuja asked: “What about the weekend plan?” I was in the middle of getting prepared for my lecture so I responded, nothing quite planned. She rambled about a couple of places she wants to travel, without getting into depth I smiled and laid out two fingers before her to picked out one and the choices were between Bundi and Bikaner. In that night I got the train tickets on Tatkal and the next two days, we were headed to explore the narrow sleepy routes together, getting everything that a little hidden jewel of Rajasthan called Bondi surrounded with Aravalli Hills has to offer. Tanuja and me didn’t have scheduled itinerary and didn’t summarised the amount of time we had in our hands. It was 9A.M in the morning and town was still sleeping when our train reached Bundi Station and we got a text from our telecom network “As per government instruction Internet services have been stopped in your area till further notice.” But still there was certain kind of calmness in reaching with no bucket list to tick, no internet and no pressure to see everything in limited time. We hop-on to tuk-tuk and have our sumptuous breakfast in the rooftop café of lovely heritage hotel called Bundi House, which was almost at the stone through distance from the Taragarh fort. We walked through the few small lanes to reach the foyer of the fort. I amazed after seeing those extremely catchy paintings resembled with the Japanese art form which painted on the inner wall and ceiling of locked chambers of the Taragarh Palace. I’d be lying if I say that I remember his name who extended his helping hand and explained the unfolding history of the small town and suggested step wells, bazaar, lakes, and Bhimlat waterfall to explore while moving towards the top of fort from where the view of the city was breath-taking. The explorations for the day was slowly put to rest when sun begins to set and the moon comes up, there was much calm rhythmic Sarangi sound while looking at the natural surround at the Sukh Mahal where Rudyard spent a few days and wrote parts of “The Jungle Book”, we met with an old men who passes a smile and also talked about Bhimlat waterfall. There are too many of us waking up every day waiting for a miracle to happen. In the next day, I’m glad that I woke up early to follow our journey towards more wonderful memories to remember before boarding on the bus. The early first hour ride was quite bumpy when we left the state highway and stared taking the village road on tuk-tuk. The driver offered us to become our guide and said, there was 2 km walk, if we want to see the cave painting and temple. After a little indecisiveness of whether to trek or not, we decided to move ahead. There was no road labels or no direction available for the cave. We followed our driver cum aka guide who made that possible to find the way. We did not found a single soul in the middle of the rocky desert but the Bhimlat waterfall and wildflowers called out to me you belong to us they said. We started climbing down through the staircases and reached the bottom of the waterfall there was a Shiva temple from where I felt the mists on my face. We thought to spend the entire afternoon sitting there but the clock was ticking and we had to catch the bus. I am glad that despite picking up the other finger initially, we chose Bundi. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware of how beautiful Bikaner is. But these few unforgettable memories from our travel with all those whom we don’t even know, passes a smile will stay with us for a life long and make our lips curve into a smile when we remember these all on a random day. What matters is the number of times you manage to have a small impact in someone’s journey, even if it’s serving them the hot cup of chai.