Bundi, India

During the first week or so of our trip, Mom told me that eventually I’d get sick of going to restaurants. I told her I would never feel that way. A few weeks later, I was wishing we could eat in every night. (Mom doesn’t, but that’s because she has to cook.)

Now we’ve been to restaurant after restaurant, getting the range from awful to pretty good. Nothing ever compared to this restaurant we went to in Bundi, a small town in northern India.

After getting horribly sick, and stuck in the fairly small town during Holi, a giant Indian holiday involving powder throwing and face painting. We were sick, so didn’t participate. It also filled up all the seats on the trains, so we were going to be having the same schedule anyway.

Every night we ate out, usually looking for western food to help us through our struggles. One day, we climbed up some stairs to a rooftop café (very average) and sat down to order. They served every table one at a time, so we had to wait a bit before they gave us the notepad on which we wrote out orders. (Also average in India). They didn’t have many different fruits due to Holi closing things. We ordered and sat down to wait.

First they brought the water. No glasses, so we ordered some. The children dutifully brought out a glass. Mom noticed a thin film on the side, due to most likely not being washed. Then the kids brought out the other three glasses. All had films of earlier drinks on them, and one had three living insects inside.

We opted to drink straight from the bottle.

He brought out our Lassis (yogurt drinks), and we accidentally spilled two. They cleaned it up with a white rag so dirty Dad thought it was black. We doubt it has ever been cleaned. We also speculate it was used to clean the glasses.

After a VERY long wait, Mom got a grilled cheese sandwich. She didn’t like it, because they added too many spices. I tried it as well, but enjoyed it enormously. More food and drinks were brought out. The shakes were good. Emma’s ‘pizza’ was piled with veggies and had a little square of fake cheese melted over the top. Due to an ordering error, Emma was hoping for a cheese, tomato and olive Italian pizza.

Dad’s vegetable spaghetti was curiously absent of vegetables, to his disappointment. He had a bit of Emma’s. Emma skipped dinner.

My fruit salad had horrible fruit, as did Dad and Emma’s. And on the way out, we got a peek at the kitchen.

It wasn’t very clean, to say the least.

That was the worst restaurant I had ever been to in my life.

Anyway, we were all better on the last day there, which we spent to go see the ancient fort. It was very decorative, like all Indian monuments. We had a great guide, who told us all about the different rooms, and Hindu gods, and decorative carvings. I enjoyed it, but got pretty tired near the end.

We made it back to our nice, lake side place. I can’t say I really enjoyed Bundi, but it was the best place to get sick in India. It is a truly exotic town. The streets are full of speeding motorcyclists, pigs half submerged in the open sewers, cows eating trash dumped on the side of the road, dogs barking, and monkeys leaping across the rooftops. (With lower cleanliness standards than we would have liked). It was not the best place to relax, but for India, it was very peaceful.

India, really, as a whole, would have been better if we were fresh and ready to see sights. I kind of burned out in Egypt, losing my ability to do serious sight-seeing each day. Now I’d like to slow down and relax, but that isn’t the thing to be doing in a place like India.

-Bjorn

A view of the palace from our hotel