The land of Rao Shekha
Rao Shekha: a fifteenth-century chief of a junior branch of the Kachwaha clan of Amer, who carved out his own territory north-west of the Kachwaha heartland.
The Shekhawats spread: his descendants slowly took the sandy plains piece by piece, often from the Kaimkhani nawabs.
The Kaimkhanis: a Muslim Rajput family who held Jhunjhunu and Fatehpur. They founded Fatehpur in the mid-fifteenth century and ruled there until the Shekhawats took both towns in the early eighteenth century.
- Named after
- Rao Shekha, 15th century
- Clan
- A junior branch of the Kachwahas of Amer
- Largest estates
- Sikar and Khetri
- Districts today
- Jhunjhunu, Sikar and Churu
- No single throne: the land was divided among brothers and cousins into thikanas, landed estates each held by a thakur, the local lord.
- The estates: Sikar and Khetri were the largest. Nawalgarh, Mandawa, Dundlod, Mukundgarh and Bissau were smaller, with forts of their own.
- Loose loyalty to Jaipur: all owed allegiance to the maharajas of Jaipur, and the thakurs married into Rajasthan's great families. Our guide to the Rajput dynasties shows how the branches fit.
- Churu was Bikaner's: the painted town to the north-west belonged to the old kingdom of Bikaner, and its havelis were built by merchants under the Rathore rulers.
- What Shekhawati means today: because the painted towns cross that old border, travellers and historians use the name for the whole painted region of Jhunjhunu, Sikar and Churu districts.
- Trade bound them: the towns lay on caravan routes between the ports of Gujarat and the cities of the north.
- The bargain: the thakurs offered protection and low taxes, and merchant families settled under their forts. That made the region rich and shaped everything you'll see.
The Marwari merchants who painted their homes
That is the bittersweet heart of Shekhawati. It is an extraordinary museum that nobody planned, and you see it in every state between perfect restoration and collapse.
Marwari traders: Indians call the region's merchant communities Marwari, after Marwar, though many came from these Shekhawati towns.
The caravan fortunes: in the eighteenth century they grew rich trading grain, cotton, opium, spices and cloth.
- Wealth from
- 18th-century caravan trade
- Moved to
- Calcutta, Bombay and beyond
- Families
- Birla, Bajaj, Goenka, Podar, Ruia, Singhania
- Haveli plan
- Outer men's court, inner women's court
- The trade moves: in the nineteenth century trade shifted to the ports the British built. The caravans dried up, and the merchants followed the money to Calcutta, Bombay and beyond.
- India's great business houses: the Birlas came from Pilani, the Bajaj family from a village near Sikar, and the Goenkas, Podars, Ruias, Singhanias and more from Nawalgarh, Ramgarh, Mandawa and their neighbours.
- Money sent home: it paid for havelis, temples, wells, stepwells, schools and cenotaphs called chhatris, all built to show the town that its sons had prospered.
- The way in: a tall, painted gateway opens into an outer courtyard, the men's side, where business was done and guests received.
- The inner courtyard: through a second door, the women's world, where the family actually lived.
- The nohra: many havelis have this walled yard for camels, carts and cattle.
- Double havelis: two mirrored houses built side by side for two brothers.
- The plan explained: our journal piece what is a haveli.
- Left behind: most families never came back to stay. Many havelis were left to caretakers, and some are slowly crumbling while cousins in Kolkata or Mumbai debate their future.
How to read a painted wall
True fresco: the finest early paintings were laid on fine lime plaster in sections and painted while wet, so the pigment bonded into the lime. Then the surface was polished until it shone.
Araish: what Rajasthani masons call this polished lime work.
Earth and plant colours: red and yellow ochre, lamp black, indigo, and green from copper.
- Early technique
- True fresco on wet lime
- Polished lime
- Araish
- Early colours
- Ochres, lamp black, indigo, copper green
- Later colours
- Imported chemical pigments, late 19th century
- Later work: painters moved to dry plaster, quicker and finer in detail, and from the late nineteenth century used bright imported chemical pigments.
- Read it as a timeline: early walls show Krishna and Radha, scenes from the Ramayana, local heroes, elephants and horse processions.
- Then the world arrives: as the merchants went to Calcutta, painters showed what they saw there: Europeans in hats, steam trains, motorcars, early aeroplanes, gramophones and the odd English king or queen.
- Look up: the best work is often under the eaves, on gateway ceilings, or in small rooms where colours kept their brilliance away from the sun.
- Gold leaf: a few havelis have whole rooms worked in it.
- The details: brackets, carved wooden doors and iron studs on the gates. Each was a statement of the family's standing.
- Ilay Cooper: our planners carry the work of the British writer who spent years documenting the region's paintings.
- Go deeper: our guide to Shekhawati frescoes and our painted havelis page.
The painted towns, one by one
- Mandawa fort
- Mid-18th century, now Castle Mandawa
- Nawalgarh founded
- 1737, by Thakur Nawal Singh
- Fatehpur founded
- 15th century, by Fateh Khan
- Churu's record
- 50.8°C, June 2019
- Between towns
- An hour or less
Mandawa, the best-known
Its fort: built by the thakurs in the mid-eighteenth century to guard a trading post on the caravan route, now Castle Mandawa, the region's best-known heritage hotel.
- The town: a compact, walkable grid of havelis, among them the double havelis of the Chokhanis and Goenkas, and rooms glittering with gold paint.
- Good for: the easiest town to start with, and the busiest.
- Go early: walk before the day-trippers and you'll have whole lanes to yourself.
Nawalgarh, the scholar's choice
Founded: by Thakur Nawal Singh in 1737, home to the Podar, Goenka, Khaitan and other great families.
The most havelis: more fine ones than anywhere else in the region.
- Two museums: the Dr Ramnath A. Podar Haveli Museum, painted from floor to eaves, and the Morarka Haveli.
- Aath Haveli: a group of eight mansions that shows how painters competed street by street.
- Our favourite base: for guests who want to look closely and slowly.
Fatehpur, the oldest
Founded: by the Kaimkhani nawab Fateh Khan in the fifteenth century, the region's oldest major town.
- Its paintings: some of the earliest and finest in Shekhawati.
- The Nadine Le Prince haveli: bought and restored by the French artist, now an art centre and guest house that shows what careful restoration achieves.
- Moving and sobering: many other havelis stand empty and fading.
Alsisar, the quiet one
The fort: the small town is built around its thakurs' fort, now the Alsisar Mahal heritage hotel.
- Around it: unrestored havelis, temples and wells, with its twin, Malsisar, just down the road.
- Why we send people: there is nothing to do but walk, look and sit on the roof as the camel carts come in.
Churu, on the dunes
Setting: at the region's north-western edge, ringed by sand dunes, ruled from Bikaner.
- The havelis: some of the most imposing in Rajasthan, including the Surana haveli with its hundreds of small windows and the painted Kanhaiya Lal Bagla haveli.
- Heat: one of the hottest towns in India. It reached 50.8°C in June 2019.
- Winter: cool, golden and blissfully quiet, and the natural stop on the way to Tal Chhapar.
Mahansar, Ramgarh, Dundlod and beyond
Mahansar: the Sone Chandi ki Haveli, whose painted rooms are worked in gold and silver.
Ramgarh: a town of the Podar family, with a remarkable group of painted chhatris.
- Dundlod: its fort, and a family long associated with Marwari horses.
- Mukundgarh and Lakshmangarh: Mukundgarh has its own fort hotel, and Lakshmangarh a hilltop fort above a grid of havelis.
- Distances: each is an hour or less from the next.
Life at the edge of the Thar
The country: flat and sandy, with low dunes, thorny scrub and scattered khejri trees.
The khejri: the hardy desert tree that feeds goats, shades farmers and gives the beans for the famous sangri.
The rains: short and unreliable. Farmers sow millet and pulses after them and pray.
- Landscape
- Low dunes, thorn scrub, khejri trees
- Crops
- Millet and pulses, after the rains
- Winter nights
- Can drop below freezing
- Bring
- A warm layer for breakfast, a hat for noon
- Water works: every town has wells, step-tanks and johads, village ponds, often built by the same merchants who built the havelis.
- The finest gift: in the old days, digging a well was the most respected gift a rich family could give a town.
- A wild climate: summer days are among the hottest in India, while December and January nights can bring frost on the fields at dawn.
- Winter mornings: woodsmoke, mist over the mustard, and painted walls glowing as the sun climbs.
- Village life: outside every town, families still churn buttermilk by hand, plaster courtyards with clay and dung, and sleep on the roof in summer.
- What we arrange: a slow afternoon with a farming family, a camel-cart ride or a walk to the dunes at dusk. Our rural homestays page explains how we do it respectfully.
Dialect, dress and the Shekhawati kitchen
The dialect: locals speak Shekhawati, a form of Rajasthani close to the speech of Jaipur and Bikaner but with its own turns of phrase.
Men's dress: older men wear white dhotis, long kurtas and a turban, often bright pink, orange or the region's tie-dyed patterns.
Women's dress: bold odhnis, the long veil-cloths of Rajasthan, and heavy silver jewellery in the villages.
- Dialect
- Shekhawati, a form of Rajasthani
- Winter bread
- Bajre ki roti, white butter, jaggery
- Signature dish
- Ker sangri
- Sweet town
- Chirawa, for milk pedas
- The Marwari kitchen: largely vegetarian and often without onion or garlic.
- Bajre ki roti: a heavy winter millet flatbread eaten with white butter and jaggery.
- Raab: a warm porridge of millet and buttermilk that farmers drink at dawn.
- Ker sangri: dried desert berries and khejri beans cooked with spices, the taste of this land.
- The thali: kadhi, pakoras and spiced dal fill it out.
- Sweets: Chirawa is known for its milk pedas, and every town has a halwai, a sweet-maker, frying jalebis in the morning.
- Every dish explained: our Rajasthani food guide.
- Home cooking: the heritage hotels are family-run, and their kitchens use family recipes.
Festivals of the painted towns
- Holi
- February or March
- Shekhawati Festival
- Late winter, February or March
- Gangaur
- March or April
- Teej
- The monsoon
- Khatu Shyam fair
- Phalgun
Holi and the Gindad dance
Gindad: in the weeks before Holi, men gather in the squares at night for this circle dance with sticks, to the beat of the chang, a big frame drum.
- The day itself: the towns explode in colour.
- Why come: one of the most joyful Holis in Rajasthan, and among the least touristic.
The Shekhawati Festival
When: late winter, in February in many years and in March in recent ones.
- Where: Nawalgarh and nearby towns.
- What: the state's festival of folk music, camel races, craft fairs and haveli walks.
- Dancers to watch for: the kachhi ghodi dance on dummy horses.
Gangaur and Teej
- The women's festivals: Gangaur in March or April and Teej in the monsoon, as across Rajasthan.
- In Shekhawati: girls carry clay images of the goddess through the lanes, singing songs their grandmothers taught them.
Pilgrim fairs at Khatu and Salasar
Khatu Shyam ji: near Sikar, one of north India's busiest pilgrimage temples, with its great fair in the month of Phalgun.
- Salasar Balaji: in Churu district, another major pilgrimage temple.
- On fair days: walking pilgrims fill the roads. Beautiful to witness, but we plan your drives around them.
How to travel Shekhawati, and where to stay
October to March: the season.
February: lovely, with mustard in flower and comfortable days.
December and January: crisp, and cold at night.
- Season
- October to March
- Mandawa from Jaipur
- About three and a half to four hours
- Mandawa from Delhi
- About five to six hours
- On to Bikaner
- About four hours west
- Between towns
- An hour's drive links most
- From April: the heat builds fast, and by June the towns are among the hottest places in India.
- July and August: the short monsoon greens the fields but brings humidity.
- Where it fits: between Jaipur and Delhi, or between Jaipur and Bikaner.
- A stop on the way: from Jaipur we like to pause at Samode, whose palace is itself a painted jewel.
- Getting around: a private car is essential.
- Heritage, not palaces: there are no grand palace hotels. The luxury is a fort or haveli still owned by the family that built it, with painted rooms, a courtyard pool and dinner on the roof.
- Long-established choices: Castle Mandawa, Alsisar Mahal and the Roop Niwas Kothi in Nawalgarh.
- The Piramal Haveli: in Bagar, a calm, beautifully kept merchant house.
- Compare them: our guide to the haveli hotels of Shekhawati.
- Visiting havelis: many are private homes. Some are museums, and others are kept by caretakers who will show you round for a small tip. Our guides know which families welcome visitors.
- The easiest way in: our four-night painted towns of Shekhawati journey.
- Going further: the region anchors our longer heritage havelis trail.
What we tell friends before Shekhawati
Stay at least two nights: the paintings are best in the low light of early morning and late afternoon, and a day trip misses both.
Torch and binoculars: the finest details are often high under the eaves or in dark gateway ceilings.
- Always ask first: even if the door is open. Many havelis are family homes, and a caretaker or grandmother may be inside.
- Don't buy the doors: please don't buy carved doors, brackets or painted panels from antique dealers. Many are stripped from abandoned havelis, and each sale makes the next theft more likely.
- Tip the caretakers: they are often the only reason those buildings still stand.
- Dress modestly: in the old towns, and cover your head lightly if invited into a family temple.
- Ask who built it: and where the family lives now. The answer is usually a story about Calcutta, a fortune and a grandfather who never came home.