Kishangarh, the town of Bani Thani and the marble trade

A Rathore prince and a lake

• The founding: a town on the banks of Gundolav lake, around 1609 to 1611, which took his name.
• Three centuries: his descendants, Rathores of a junior branch of Jodhpur, ruled Kishangarh as a small state for more than three hundred years.
• A powerful sister: Jagat Gosain, a daughter of the Mota Raja, was married to the emperor Jahangir and was the mother of Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal.
• The emperor's uncle: that made Kishangarh's founder an uncle of the emperor, and helps explain how a younger son could carve out a state so close to Mughal Ajmer.
• Small and squeezed: it lay between far stronger neighbours, Jaipur to the east, Jodhpur to the west and Mughal Ajmer just to the south.
• How it survived: through careful alliances.
• Under the British: from 1818, like the other states of Rajputana.
• Modest reforms: in the early twentieth century, during a severe drought, the young Maharaja Madan Singh extended irrigation and encouraged cotton mills.
• After independence: Kishangarh merged into the new state of Rajasthan.
• What mattered was taste: for a few decades in the eighteenth century this small court produced some of the most beautiful paintings ever made in India, and a love story to go with them.

Sawant Singh, the king who became a poet

• His themes: Radha and Krishna in the groves of Vrindavan, longing, separation and union.
• Vishnupriya: a singer and poet at the court, who wrote under her own pen name.
• Bani Thani: her name means roughly the adorned one, the woman decked out in jewels.
• Companion and muse: Sawant Singh loved her, and over the years she became both.
• Radha and Krishna: in his poems she seems to merge with Radha, and in the court paintings the two of them often appear as the divine lovers.
• Braj Bhasha: the soft, musical language of the country around Mathura, used by poets across north India for songs of Krishna.
• Made to be sung: our guides sometimes recite a line or two on the shore of Gundolav. Even without the words, the rhythm explains the paintings: slow, lyrical and full of longing.
• Their memorials: twin pavilions near the Nagari Kunj temple in Vrindavan, in what is now Mathura and Vrindavan.

The Kishangarh school of painting

• The eyes: drawn impossibly long and curved, like lotus petals or fish, turning up at the outer corner.
• The face: high-arched eyebrows, sharp fine noses, small pointed chins and long slender necks.
• The body: tall and willowy.
• Not realism: an ideal of beauty refined almost to abstraction, matching the dreamlike devotion of Nagari Das's poems.
• The lakes: vast, calm water to the horizon, with boats, lotus beds, white pavilions and distant hills, often at dusk or by moonlight.
• Gundolav in paint: stand on its shore first and you will recognise the lake. The painters set Radha and Krishna in their own palace gardens, on their own water.
• The Mona Lisa of India: the profile portrait of Bani Thani is often called that.
• Far from home: major works are now in museums, and very few remain in the town itself.
• Still painted: a small number of painters in and near Kishangarh work in the style, and we can arrange a studio visit.
• How it's made: our guide to miniature painting covers squirrel-hair brushes, mineral pigments and burnished paper.
• Rediscovered: long known only to princely owners and a few connoisseurs, the school was brought to wide attention in the twentieth century as royal collections were catalogued, exhibited and dispersed.
• A landmark book: Eric Dickinson and Karl Khandalavala's study Kishangarh Painting, published in 1959, did much to make the school known.
• Today: counted among the high points of Indian painting.

How to look at a Kishangarh painting

Gundolav lake and Phool Mahal

• Evenings: families come down to the water to walk.
• Phool Mahal: the flower palace, a nineteenth-century palace of the rulers on the shore, run by the former royal family as a heritage hotel.
• The view: its rooms look across the water, and its terraces are the best place in town for tea at sunset.
• Even if you don't stay: we try to arrange tea on the lakeside, so you see the view the painters knew.
• The old fort-palace: behind it, rising in walls and courtyards. Parts remain a private family residence and access changes, so we arrange any visit in advance.
• A gentle hour: walk the lanes beneath its walls, past small temples and old havelis.

The marble city

• Gang saws: huge machines cut blocks into slabs, with water flowing over the blades to keep them cool.
• Polishing: brings up the pattern in the stone.
• Named stone: traders show slabs of white, green, pink and black, each with a name and a quarry of origin.
• No pressure: we visit with a friend in the trade, and there is no obligation to buy.
• The white landscape: fine slurry from cutting and polishing is dumped outside town, where it has dried into ridges and pools.
• Popular, but honest: photographers and couples come for pre-wedding pictures, but it is dusty industrial waste, hard on the environment, and we talk about it rather than sell it as a sight.
• The older side of stone: our guide to the marble craft of Makrana, the quarries that supplied the Taj Mahal.

The town between the lake and the highway

• Offerings: women in bright odhnis, the long head-scarves of Rajasthan, carry them to the shrines.
• Curious and friendly: it is not a tourist town at all, and people are glad to see the few visitors who wander through.
• The new town: along the national highway, all business: marble and granite showrooms, trucks, workshops, dhabas and the constant whine of saws.
• A new living: many families who once farmed or worked in the old town now work in stone.
• Not a museum: Rajasthan's royal towns have had to find new ways to make a living, and Kishangarh found one in marble.

What we eat in Kishangarh

• Winter: gajak and other sesame sweets.
• Next door: Ajmer is known for sohan halwa.
• At the heritage hotels: at Phool Mahal or Roopangarh, ask for a Rajasthani dinner rather than a continental menu.
• Family recipes: the cooks often know them.
• The best end to a day: dal baati, ker sangri and fresh rotis on a terrace beside the lake.

Places to combine with Kishangarh

Where to stay in and around Kishangarh

• We check first: rooms vary, so we see them personally before booking.
• For a pool and spa: stay in Pushkar and visit Kishangarh as a half day. Our guide to luxury stays in Pushkar has our favourites.
• Flying in or out: travellers using Kishangarh Airport often spend their first or last night here.

When to come to Kishangarh

• April to June: very hot, and the stone yards are punishing at midday.
• The monsoon: fills the lake and turns the fields green.
• During the Pushkar fair: Kishangarh makes a calm base away from the crowds, though you must book well ahead.
• The wider picture: our guide to the best time to visit Rajasthan.

Getting to Kishangarh

• From Ajmer: under an hour.
• By train: the station is on the line between Jaipur and Ajmer.
• Planning the drives: our guide to getting around Rajasthan.

A day in Kishangarh, the way we plan it

• With a second day: add Sambhar Lake, or continue to Ajmer and Pushkar.
• Rajasthan's workshops: our textile and craft trail links Kishangarh with the others.

Who will love Kishangarh, and who may not

• Or if: you are flying through its airport and want something better than a highway hotel.
• Artists and designers: find it inspiring, for the paintings and the endless colours of the stone yards.
• Underwhelming if: you expect great monuments. There is no Amber Fort or Mehrangarh, and the best paintings are in museums elsewhere.
• Its pleasures are quieter: a lake at dusk, a painter's studio, a love story from two and a half centuries ago.
• How we plan it: a half day or a single night between Jaipur and Ajmer.

What we tell our own cousins

• No need to buy marble: traders are used to visitors who only want to look, and our friends in the trade expect nothing.
• Closed shoes in the yards: floors are wet and slabs are heavy.
• Ask before photographing workers: and keep well clear of the saws.
• Careful with the slurry fields: the fine dust gets into lungs and cameras, so we go only briefly, if at all.
• Follow the love story: add a day in Vrindavan on the way to Agra, and visit the chhatris of Nagari Das and Bani Thani by the Nagari Kunj.