Shekhawati Region of Rajasthan – Nawalgarh & Mandawa

After spending amazing time in Jaipur and visiting few of the most popular places of Jaipur. On Day 3 we headed to a less explored region of Rajasthan i.e. Shekhawati region.

As mentioned in my first blog this is region is located in Northern part of Rajasthan. It consists of Jhunjhunu, Sikar & Churu district.

Places we visited came under Jhunjhunu district. As per the guides this region was founded by ‘Rao Shekha’ and named after him.

About the region

This region consists of some of the most beautiful and iconic havelis. Word haveli means big house or as per our guide “Havadaar” ghar. These havelis were build by some of the rich merchants of that time.

This region was a part of ‘Silk route’ so the merchants were quite rich. They built these havelis to show off their wealth. Few of the famous havelis are situated in Nawalgarh, Mandawa & Fatehpur.

We visited Nawalgarh on our way to Mandawa. It’s around 120 Km from Jaipur and it’s a National Highway 52 via Sikar.

The most famous haveli in this place is ‘Podar’ haveli. After restoration it was converted into a museum and now it is maintained by the Podar trust.

This place is really beautiful, with lot of frescoes. Fresco is a technique in which the painting . It is done when the plaster is wet so that the paint penetrates the plaster and becomes fixed upon drying.

There are 2 courtyards with different kind of frescos all around it.

The door that connects these 2 courtyards was(is) amongst the most beautiful gates in the country.

There are around 700+  frescos in this haveli, these frescos depict many scenes from Indian mythology as well as some modern trends like trains and dresses and also European culture. All the colors used in these frescos was obtained naturally.

There is entry ticket which is Rs 75 pp and timings are from 8 AM to 8 PM.

The museum displays the art and culture of Rajasthan,different festivals and way of celebration.

Different types of bridal costumes which brides of different sections of the society wear.

There is a section which displays different turbans which holds specific significance and are wore on different occasions .

In the marble art section, there is this beautiful artifact of a Rajasthani women. Build out of single piece of marble.

There was a school at this place which was converted into a museum. To accommodate the kids, they constructed few rooms on the first floor.

The caretaker/manager of this place showed us the Haveli and informed us each and every detail about the place plus. He helped us in clicking some good pics as well ?.

After completing our tour and taking a lot of pictures, we continued with rest of the Journey towards Mandawa which another 30 Km. We booked the stay a place which was 9-10 km before Mandawa city.

Mandawa is 236 KM from Delhi.

On the way we stopped at a hotel and to our surprise it was one of the most cleaned and hygienic and modern roadside hotel/property. It has auto on lights in bathroom with contact less flush etc.

We had tea here and it was really good. Place name is – Hotel Om, Sikar Road. You can see it on the left side while coming from Jaipur and going towards Mandawa.

We stayed @The Desert Resort which is part of WelcomHeritage hotels. It’s design replicate the rural culture. It has mud houses/huts of different sizes.

This was the second time we didn’t find the service up to the mark as per 5* standards(First one was with Sofitel BKC Mumbai which is one of the worst service we ever had)

So, there was a film crew who has occupied most of the resort and we were given choice of 2 rooms, one in each category and the rooms were not cleaned at all.

The covers of sitting area was dirty there was dirt on the floor on the table, we called multiple times for all this.

Also not sure if there was shortage of staff but as there was a bottle kept outside of room which was there when we arrived and was still there when we were checking out.

Another thing is there was garbage left by guest in the main garden area right in front of reception and few of the housekeeping members pass by but no one picked it

Overall their attitude was not at all good which is totally opposite of the people of this region. We booked this place for 2 days but moved out after one day to a different property.

And  this was one of the best decisions as we got the chance to stay in one of the original heritage property more than 100 year old Haveli – Vivaana Culture Hotel

Day we reached Desert resort we relaxed as we were tired of walking a lot in Jaipur and explored the property itself.

The property is good with some activities as well(which are very costly like Rs 1500-2000 per activity) we didn’t do any activity as most of these activities we were going to do in our next destination.

In Mandawa city there is a lot to see and can be covered in half day or max a day’s time. All the tours are done walking only. The guides here knows multiple languages as before pandemic most of the tourists were foreigners.

Fun Fact 1 – our guide asked us which language we prefer we said Hindi then he said he is not comfortable in Hindi as their native language is marwadi and after that he can talk in English, German, French etc.

Fun Fact 2 – Bajrangi Bhai Jaan wash shot in Mandawa (Pakistan part)

Frescos inspired from different historical events

There is a fort in Mandawa which is now a hotel and there is entry fee and as per the guide it was not worth.

There was this one golden room and the ticket price of that was 100 pp and that was not worth at all. So, you can avoid that and can save some money. Why not worth as the room was not maintained at all the family living there have stored all the crap and the walls and ceiling was not maintained.

After completing our tour of Mandawa we came back to the Haveli where we were staying and had a tour of that as well.

They also do village walk but not sure if it was due to pandemic or we were Indian tourist the person was not at all interested in taking us for a walk, so we did that by ourselves.

You will see a lot of cows and bulls and cute little kids playing in the evening, we went to a vendor who make Bangles but we were little late as they have already turned off the furnace(small one to make bangles).

He didn’t even showed his own property(he works there was customer relationship manager at the property) with any enthusiasm or interest.

The Maze waterway in the middle of the courtyard is a tribute to the amazing human ability to negotiate problems and came out free at the other end.

We gave the same review in their feedback book and to our surprise the owner does check that, and we got a WhatsApp message from the owner Mr. Atul Khanna very next day when we were on rout to our next destination. He apologized for that person’s behavior and informed us that there CRM is very enthusiastic.

There are different category room starting from Deluxe, Luxury and Royal. We got the opportunity to stay in Royal room which was quite amazing and weird as well.

Weird in the sense that the bathroom of this room was on the first floor and it’s an open bathroom.

The room is very beautiful with frescos all over the room. This property has 2 blocks, basically they acquired the haveli adjacent to theirs and combined it.

The Luxury rooms with frescos are there in second block and on low occupancy they close that block to save some money.

Overall with mixed experience we enjoyed our stay in Mandawa and will definitely recommend it to everyone.