Girlspytravel

You stayed there before? I thought Rambagh Palace had terrific ambience-of all the former maharajah properties I visited in India, that was my favorite.

By the way, I told you I stayed at the Bissau Palace in Jaipur, which was the home of a present maharajah, and was like a museum, with antique poster beds, and was just filled with quirkiness, but not good service? we got the distinct impression that the maharajah did not have money, so he had to open this hotel, since he lived above the hotel rooms. I looked up the maharajah of Bissau, (a small state in Rajasthan) and sure enough, there he was on wikipedia-the very same one who would stare at us from the balcony while we were down in the garden! Here is a picture of the hotel
reception area:

http://bissaupalace.com/history.htm

This area, and the garden are the nicest parts of the hotel (watch out for those large monkeys swinging around the joint also-I was scared of them-monkeys don't like me, they know I'm thinking about how close we are ancestrally, and they don't like my thoughts on the subject-I had a rather unpleasant and slightly scary run-in with the chief monkey god at Pashupatinath, the great Hindu complex in Kathmandu; he came up behind me and tried to bite me through my jeans-then when I turned around-he started screaming at me-I ran away-he had seen me earlier looking at him, and taking a picture of him, and he plain didn't like it!)

I hope I have inspired you to go back, Ek, really, India/Nepal is quite the incredible journey. The Dutch company is out of Leiden, Holland, called Djoser Travel. They have a US representative, but it is more expensive to go through them, on the other hand, they do group tours, or they put together individualized itineraries for two or more people, if you are interested.

ekscrunchy

Yes, believe it or not I stayed there in the very early 1970s! It was very grand. I also stayed in the honeymoon suite at the Lake Palace in Udaipur on the same trip. The price for that room (I was NOT on my honeymoon) was $17.50US which was astonishingly expensive for India back then.

Girlspy: There is an interesting book, "A Princess Remembers, " written by the former maharani of Jaipur, Gayatri Devi. See if you can dig it up if you have not read it. I believe (and I read this many years ago so am not sure if I am remembering correctly) that she lived in the Rambagh Palace with her husband the Maharajah Jai Singh. (not sure about the Sikh name..) The glamorous couple once played hosts to Jackie Kennedy and probably lots of other jet setters of the era..there were lots of photos of Jackie atop an elephant at Amber Fort..

There was another former palace in Jodphur that I stayed at on another trip...

You have inspired me...I will have to get a new India guidebook and do some reading!!

Girlspytravel

She DID live at the Rambagh Palace-you are right! She was the maharajah's wife, and there is a picture of her in the Palace there. I believe I read somewhere that Vogue had named her one of the most beautiful women in the world, but what time period, I'm not sure.(perhaps the 50's?)

Wow. I can't believe the rates you paid for the Lake Palace back in the day. Amazing!

Girlspytravel

For all those who are interested in Kathmandu, the NY Times ran an interesting article today about revived tourism to Kathmandu and Nepal, and the return of "peace"-I believe this article was written some time at the end of December, and perhaps the writer doesn't know about all the pre-election violence going on right now. At any rate, there is a picture of the monkeys at Pashupatinath, which I reference above in my report-and one of those monkeys in the picture is the very monkey who waited until my back was turned, some weeks ago, so he could come up behind in a sneak attack and bite me in the back of the leg! I'm quite sure! If you go here (and I don't really recommend going, because you can't really see that much, and you pay 250 rupees to essentially just walk around and look at the cremation ghats, and outer walls, rather than the temples, which you're not allowed into unless you are Hindu)it's about a 15-20 minute ride by taxi from Kathmandu, however it is only a few minutes away from Bodhnath, the great Tibetan Buddhist exile community, so you can visit both the same day or afternoon. Here's the link to Sunday's article:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/03/23...tml?ref=travel

janev

ekscrunchy - I also read the book "A Princess Remembers" when we did the "golden triangle" - it is a lovely book and clearly paints a picture of the life the rich lead in India at that time.
I especially remember the bit where she took a taxi in London (she had been studying at Pitmans) and the driver trying to be very kind, on seeing she was Indian, advising her a bus would cost her much less than a taxi. To the taxi driver all Indians were poor - he had no idea of the great riches many Indians came from.