Rajasthan Heritage Homestay Tour

Your flight lands at Indira Gandhi International Airport, where a member of the Payless Tours India team is waiting outside the arrivals hall with a name board. He will help you buy a local SIM card if you need one, change a little money at the airport counter and walk with you to the car. For solo travellers in particular, this first meeting matters, so the driver who collects you is the same person who will be with you for most of the next two weeks. He will give you his mobile number and the number of our office, and you can call either at any hour if something is not right.

The drive to your hotel in central Delhi takes between forty minutes and an hour, depending on the time of day. On the way, your driver will talk you through the plan for tomorrow and the broad shape of the route, and he can answer the practical questions that first-time visitors often have, such as whether tap water is safe (it is not; bottled water is provided in the car), how to dress for temples, and how much to tip at a roadside tea stall. Delhi is the only stay on this tour in a regular hotel, chosen for an easy first night after a long flight and a calm start before the homestays begin.

If you arrive in the afternoon and still have energy, the hotel staff can direct you to Lodhi Garden, a large park a short ride away where fifteenth-century tombs of the Sayyid and Lodi rulers stand among lawns and old trees. In the early evening it fills with local families, walkers and yoga groups, and it is an easy, safe place for a first look at city life. Alternatively, rest at the hotel and adjust to the time difference, because the next day starts with a drive into the countryside. Dinner tonight is at your own choice and cost.

Overnight stay in Delhi.

After breakfast your driver collects you for the drive west into the Shekhawati region, which takes five to six hours through the farmland of Haryana and northern Rajasthan. Shekhawati takes its name from Rao Shekha, a fifteenth-century Rajput chief, but its wealth came from the Marwari merchant families who traded across India in the nineteenth century. They sent money home to build large havelis covered in painted murals, which is why these small dusty towns have more wall paintings than many large cities. Your driver will stop for tea and lunch at a highway dhaba, where you can try a stuffed paratha and a glass of fresh buttermilk.

You arrive in the early afternoon at your homestay, a haveli in or near Nawalgarh that still belongs to the family who built it more than a century ago. Your host will show you to your room, which opens onto an inner courtyard surrounded by painted walls, carved doors and wooden balconies. Many of these houses were left empty when their owners moved to Kolkata and Mumbai, and the family will tell you how they returned, restored a few rooms and opened them to guests so that the building could be kept alive. Tea is served on the roof, with views over the town's water tanks and temple domes.

In the late afternoon your host or a member of the family walks with you through the lanes nearby, pointing out murals that show trains, motor cars, British officers and gods side by side, painted by artists who had only heard descriptions of these things. Dinner is cooked in the family kitchen and served in the courtyard or dining room: expect dal, a seasonal vegetable, bajra or wheat roti, rice and a sweet such as churma. Conversation over the meal often turns to marriage customs, the joint family system and the changing fortunes of the Shekhawati towns. Breakfast and dinner are included from tonight onward.

Overnight stay at the Shekhawati homestay.

After a home-cooked breakfast of poha or aloo paratha with yoghurt, you set out with a local guide to see the best-preserved havelis of Nawalgarh. The Poddar Haveli Museum has been carefully restored and shows how a merchant household was arranged, with separate courtyards for men and women and a ground-floor office for business. The Morarka Haveli has murals from the early twentieth century in strong reds and blues, showing scenes from the Ramayana alongside images of European travellers. Your guide will explain how the painters used lime plaster and natural pigments, and how the themes shifted as the merchants came into contact with the British.

Later you drive about thirty kilometres north to Mandawa, the best-known town in the region, which was founded as a trading post in the eighteenth century. Here the Jhunjhunwala, Goenka and Chokhani havelis line narrow lanes, and in some you will meet caretakers whose families have looked after the houses for three or four generations. Look out for the painted ceilings in the inner rooms, where the colours have survived better than on the outer walls. Lunch is at your own cost at a local café or the restaurant inside Mandawa Castle, a fortified palace now used as a hotel, where you can also climb to the battlements for a view of the town.

You return to Nawalgarh in the late afternoon, and your host may take you to a nearby farm owned by the family or a village where they have long-standing ties. Many Rajput families in Shekhawati still keep land and cattle, and a short walk through mustard or millet fields gives a picture of rural life just outside the painted towns. In the evening the household gathers again for dinner, and if you are interested the women of the family may let you watch them roll rotis and temper the dal with ghee, cumin and red chillies. Solo travellers often find this the evening when the family starts to feel like friends.

Overnight stay at the Shekhawati homestay.

After breakfast and a farewell to your Shekhawati hosts, you drive south to Jaipur, a journey of three to three and a half hours. On the way your driver can stop at Samode, a village below the Aravalli hills where a nineteenth-century palace has been turned into a hotel; the painted Durbar Hall can sometimes be seen with a light lunch or tea. Closer to Jaipur the road becomes busier, with trucks, scooters and camel carts sharing the highway, and you will notice the change from small towns to the outskirts of a city of more than three million people. You should reach Jaipur by the early afternoon.

Your Jaipur homestay is in a family house in one of the older residential areas, run by a Rajput family whose members include retired army officers, teachers or lawyers. Many of these families once held small estates, or thikanas, in the princely state of Jaipur and moved into the city after land reforms in the 1950s. Your host will tell you about the family's history, show you old photographs and weapons kept in the drawing room, and suggest the best times to visit the sights. The house is quiet, with a garden or terrace where tea is served, and it gives you a calm base close to the busy old city.

In the late afternoon your driver takes you to the old walled city, painted terracotta pink since 1876 for the visit of the Prince of Wales. You walk through Bapu Bazaar and Nehru Bazaar, where shops sell block-printed fabric, mojari slippers and lac bangles, and stop in front of Hawa Mahal as the light softens on its honeycomb façade. If you would like to, your host can recommend a small shop where the family has bought its fabrics for years. Back at the house, dinner is a Rajasthani meal that might include gatte ki sabzi, a gram-flour dumpling curry, and laal maas if you eat meat.

Overnight stay at the Jaipur homestay.

After breakfast, your local guide arrives and you drive eleven kilometres north to Amber Fort, which was the capital of the Kachhwaha Rajputs until Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II moved his court to the new city of Jaipur in 1727. The fort climbs the hillside above Maota Lake in a series of courtyards. Your guide will lead you through the Diwan-i-Aam, the Ganesh Pol with its painted arch, and the Sheesh Mahal, the mirror palace where the queens spent winter evenings. You will also see the women's quarter, the zenana, arranged so that each wife had her own suite and the king could visit without being noticed.

Returning to the city, you visit the City Palace, where part of the complex is still occupied by the former royal family. The Mubarak Mahal displays the clothing of Sawai Madho Singh I, a ruler said to have weighed around 250 kg, and the Diwan-i-Khas holds two enormous silver urns made in 1902 to carry Ganges water to England. Next door, Jantar Mantar was built by Jai Singh II, who studied astronomy and built five observatories in north India. Your guide will show you how the Samrat Yantra measures local time from its shadow, and how the Jaipur instruments were used to prepare calendars and predict eclipses.

In the late afternoon you return to the homestay, where the lady of the house invites you into her kitchen for a cooking session. You will learn to make dal tadka, a dry vegetable dish, jeera rice and fresh chapatis, rolling the dough yourself and cooking it on an iron tawa over the flame. She will explain the spices, how dishes change in summer and winter, and the household rules around food, such as which days the family avoids onion and garlic. The dishes you prepare become part of the family dinner, and many guests ask for the recipes to take home.

Overnight stay at the Jaipur homestay.

After breakfast you thank your Jaipur hosts and drive south to Bundi, a trip of around four hours. The highway passes through Tonk district and then into the Hadoti region, where the land becomes greener and the Aravalli hills rise again. Bundi was the capital of the Hada Chauhan Rajputs from the fourteenth century, and unlike Jaipur or Udaipur it has never become a large city, so it keeps much of its old character. Rudyard Kipling stayed here in the 1880s and wrote that the palace looked as though it had been built by goblins, a description local guides still enjoy repeating.

Your Bundi homestay is a family house in the old town below the palace, often painted blue in the same way as parts of Jodhpur, with a rooftop that looks straight up at Garh Palace and Taragarh Fort on the hill. The family may be descended from courtiers of the Bundi rulers, and your host will be happy to share stories about the town's past and its festivals, such as Kajli Teej in late summer. Lunch can be taken at a rooftop café nearby at your own cost. In the afternoon, walk the lanes around the house, where men still sit outside their doors and children play cricket in the narrow streets.

Later in the afternoon your local guide takes you to Raniji ki Baori, a stepwell built in 1699 by Rani Nathavati, the queen of Rao Raja Anirudh Singh. It is around 46 metres deep, with carved pillars and an arched gateway decorated with elephants and floral designs. Bundi once had more than fifty stepwells and tanks, because the town depended on stored rainwater, and you can also see the twin stepwells of Nagar Sagar Kund near the market. As the sun sets, return to the homestay's roof for tea while the palace walls catch the last light. Dinner is served at home with the family.

Overnight stay at the Bundi homestay.

After breakfast, your guide meets you for a morning visit to Garh Palace, which climbs the hillside in a series of halls, terraces and gateways built by different rulers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. You enter through the Hathi Pol, the elephant gate, with two carved stone elephants above the arch. Inside, some rooms are in good condition and others are crumbling, which gives the palace a quiet and slightly forgotten feeling. The guide will explain how the palace was laid out for defence as well as comfort, and how the Bundi rulers kept their independence by careful alliances with the Mughals and later with the British.

The highlight is the Chitrashala, a small courtyard and gallery whose walls are covered in eighteenth-century paintings in the Bundi style. The colours are mainly turquoise, green and red, and the scenes show Krishna with the gopis, royal processions, hunting parties and court life in great detail. Your guide will point out the small touches the artists added, such as monkeys in the trees and fish in the lotus ponds. For those with energy, the steep path up to Taragarh Fort above the palace takes about forty-five minutes on foot and gives wide views over the town and the surrounding hills, though the fort itself is largely in ruins.

In the afternoon you visit Sukh Mahal, a small summer palace beside Jait Sagar Lake where Kipling is believed to have stayed, and the Raniji ki Chhatri and 84-pillared cenotaph, Chaurasi Khambon ki Chhatri, built in 1683. You return to the homestay in time to rest before dinner. In the evening, the conversation often turns to how families like your hosts have adapted, with some members working in Jaipur or abroad and others staying to look after the house and land. It is a good chance to ask about arranged marriages, education and the role of women in Rajput households today.

Overnight stay at the Bundi homestay.

After breakfast, you leave Bundi and drive south-west towards Udaipur, a journey of five to six hours. About a third of the way, you stop at Menal, where a group of eleventh-century Shiva temples stands beside a gorge and a seasonal waterfall. The main temple, Mahanaleshwar, has a tall spire and fine carvings of dancers and musicians on its outer walls. The site is very quiet and gives you a good chance to stretch your legs. From Menal the road runs through farmland and small towns, crossing into the Mewar region, the land of the Sisodia Rajputs, who were known for refusing to accept Mughal rule.

You reach Udaipur in the mid-afternoon and arrive at your homestay, a family house in the old city or near Lake Fateh Sagar. Your host family belongs to one of the old Mewari noble or professional families, and the house may contain miniature paintings, family portraits and furniture passed down for several generations. Your host will explain that Udaipur was founded in 1559 by Maharana Udai Singh II after Chittorgarh became too exposed to attack, and that the city was planned around a chain of artificial lakes. There is time to settle in and have tea on the terrace while you plan the next day with the family.

In the early evening your driver takes you to the Gangaur Ghat on Lake Pichola, where you can sit on the steps and watch the light change over the water. Nearby, Bagore ki Haveli holds a Dharohar folk dance show every evening, with puppetry and the bhavai dance, in which women balance stacks of brass pots on their heads. Tickets are bought locally. Afterwards you return to the homestay, where dinner is a Mewari meal, perhaps dal baati churma, makki ki roti made from corn, and a gentle kadhi. Your hosts can talk about the town's festivals, such as Gangaur in spring.

Overnight stay at the Udaipur homestay.

After breakfast your guide meets you for the City Palace, the largest palace complex in Rajasthan, built over nearly four centuries by successive Maharanas of Mewar. Inside you walk through narrow corridors, small courtyards and rooms decorated with mirror work, coloured glass and miniature paintings. The Mor Chowk courtyard is known for its peacocks made of glass mosaic, and the Zenana Mahal holds paintings of royal processions and festivals. Your guide will tell the story of Maharana Pratap, who fought the Mughal army at Haldighati in 1576 and is still the great hero of Mewar.

Next to the palace stands the Jagdish Temple, built in 1651 by Maharana Jagat Singh I and dedicated to Vishnu. It rises above the street on a high plinth, and its walls are covered with carvings of elephants, horsemen and dancers. The temple is in active use, so you will see local people bringing flowers and offerings and hear the bells and chanting of the morning prayers. Lunch is at your own cost at one of the lakeside cafés, where the view across the water to the Lake Palace is part of the meal. The rest of the afternoon is free for walking through the old city's shops selling paintings and silver.

In the late afternoon you take a boat ride on Lake Pichola, which was enlarged in the fourteenth century and later extended by the Maharanas. The boat passes the ghats, the City Palace and the white Lake Palace, now a hotel, before stopping at Jag Mandir island, where the young Prince Khurram, later Shah Jahan, is said to have sheltered in the 1620s. The sunset from the water, with the palace walls turning orange, is the best way to see Udaipur. Back at the homestay, your hosts may show you their photo albums from family weddings, and dinner is served on the terrace.

Overnight stay at the Udaipur homestay.

After a slow breakfast, your host or driver takes you to a village outside Udaipur to see daily rural life in Mewar. Depending on the season, you may see farmers ploughing with bullocks, women carrying water, or families preparing for a wedding with painted walls and decorations. Your host may know families in the village, which means you are welcomed as a guest and not as a tourist. You might also visit a potter's workshop, where clay pots are shaped on a hand-turned wheel, or a weaver at work on a simple loom. The visit takes around two to three hours.

You return to Udaipur for lunch at your own cost, then have the afternoon free. Many guests use this time to visit Saheliyon ki Bari, an eighteenth-century garden laid out for the ladies of the royal court, with fountains, lotus pools and marble elephants. Another option is a painting workshop, where an artist demonstrates the fine brush work of Mewar miniature painting, using brushes made from squirrel hair and colours from ground stones. For solo travellers, this free half-day is a good chance to rest, write, read on the terrace or simply spend time chatting with your hosts.

In the evening your host may take you to Sajjangarh, the Monsoon Palace, which stands on a hill five kilometres west of the city and was built in 1884 by Maharana Sajjan Singh to watch the monsoon clouds. From the top you see the whole of Udaipur and its lakes spread out below, and the sunset is one of the best in Rajasthan. Back at the homestay, the last dinner in Udaipur is a chance to thank the family, and many guests find it the evening when the conversation runs the longest. Ask your hosts about the old Mewari traditions that still shape family life in the city today.

Overnight stay at the Udaipur homestay.

After breakfast you leave Udaipur and drive north into the hills, a journey of about three hours. On the way, you can stop at Eklingji, a group of temples dedicated to Shiva about twenty kilometres from Udaipur, where the Maharanas of Mewar worship their family deity; photography is not allowed inside. The road then climbs through farmland and small villages surrounded by rocky hills, with lakes and reservoirs filled after the monsoon. Deogarh was one of the sixteen noble estates of Mewar, ruled by the Chundawat Rajputs, and it still has the feel of an old estate town, with its fort on the hill and the market below.

Your homestay in Deogarh is a family home belonging to Rajput relatives of the former rulers, or a small heritage property run by the family. These homes are often large and old, with high ceilings and family portraits on the walls, and the hosts are known for their hospitality. Your host will greet you with a cup of tea and tell you about the history of the estate, including the role of the Deogarh nobles in the Mewar court. You may see old hunting trophies, swords and shields, and photographs of polo matches and royal visits from the twentieth century.

In the late afternoon your host takes you for a walk around the town, through the market and past small temples, where shopkeepers and neighbours often stop to say hello. Deogarh is also known for its own school of miniature painting, and some homes still hold old paintings of the local rulers and hunting scenes. As the light fades, you can climb to a viewpoint near the palace for a view of the lakes and hills. Dinner is served at home, with dishes from the family's own recipes, and the talk often turns to how estate families have kept their homes and traditions alive.

Overnight stay at the Deogarh homestay.

After breakfast, your host arranges a jeep ride into the countryside around Deogarh, where you pass through small villages, farmland and hills. Along the way, you may see shepherds with their flocks, women in brightly coloured odhnis carrying water, and farmers working with bullocks. The jeep stops at a village where your host knows the families, and you will be invited into a home to see how people live, cook and store grain. You can also visit a small shrine or a well, and learn how the villagers manage water during the dry months, something every family in this region plans for carefully.

You return to the homestay for lunch at your own cost, or a light meal can be arranged with the family. The afternoon is free to rest, read or take a short walk around the lake near the town, where you can see herons, egrets and cormorants. If you are interested, your host may also arrange a visit to a local craftsman, such as a silversmith making traditional jewellery or a carpenter shaping wooden toys. Many guests use this time to write in a journal, as the Deogarh days are among the most peaceful of the whole trip and the house has shaded corners to sit in.

In the evening, the family may arrange a small get-together on the terrace, with tea and snacks such as mirchi vada and kachori, and sometimes a local musician playing folk songs. It is a chance to talk about Rajput customs, festivals and the changing role of the old noble families in modern India. Dinner is served with the family, and this is often the evening when hosts share stories of weddings, hunts and celebrations from the past. For solo travellers, the warmth of the Deogarh family is one of the reasons this Rajasthan homestay tour is so popular.

Overnight stay at the Deogarh homestay.

After an early breakfast you say goodbye to your Deogarh hosts and drive west to Jodhpur, which takes four and a half to five hours. The road crosses the Aravalli range and comes down into the drier Marwar country, where the hills are bare and the villages are built of stone. Lunch is taken on the way. You arrive in Jodhpur in the early afternoon and check in at your homestay, a family haveli in or near the old city, below the walls of Mehrangarh. Your host family may have served the Jodhpur rulers as courtiers or officers, and the house holds reminders of that history.

In the afternoon your guide takes you up to Mehrangarh Fort, founded in 1459 by Rao Jodha on a rocky ridge above the city. You walk through the gates, past the handprints of the queens at Loha Pol, and into the palaces, where the Phool Mahal and Moti Mahal are decorated with gold leaf, mirrors and stained glass. The museum holds palanquins, howdahs, paintings and arms, and the ramparts give you a view over the blue houses of Brahmpuri. Your guide will explain how the fort was built and how it stood up to sieges over the centuries.

Later you walk down through the old blue lanes to the Clock Tower and Sardar Market, where spices, textiles and silver jewellery are sold, and stop at Toorji ka Jhalra, the restored stepwell nearby. In the evening your hosts serve a farewell dinner, which in Jodhpur may include mirchi bada, ker sangri, and a rich mutton or vegetable curry, followed by makhaniya lassi. This last evening of the tour is often spent on the roof, looking up at the lit walls of the fort while your hosts talk about their family's history in Jodhpur.

Overnight stay at the Jodhpur homestay.

After breakfast with your hosts, your driver takes you to Jodhpur airport for the domestic flight to Delhi, which takes about one hour and fifteen minutes. On arrival in Delhi, a member of our team meets you and transfers you to Indira Gandhi International Airport for your onward international flight, or to your hotel if you are staying longer. Thank you for travelling with Payless Tours India.