Following the merchants, not the kings
That is why we call this a trail rather than a tour. You follow one class of people and one kind of building across the north and west of the state, and by the end you can date a wall from across the lane and read a merchant's ambitions in his gateway.
What a haveli is: a courtyard house, closed to the street and open to the sky.
The plan: a tall gateway leads to an outer court, where men did business and received guests, then a second door to the inner court, where the family lived.
- Nights
- Ten: Jaipur 2, Mandawa 3, Bikaner 2, Jaisalmer 2, Jodhpur 1
- Pace
- Walks at dawn and dusk, rest at midday
- Best months
- November to February, with October and March
- Good for
- Art lovers and repeat visitors
- Starts
- Jaipur, or Delhi if you prefer
- Ends
- Jodhpur, with flights to Delhi and Mumbai
- The nohra: many havelis have one, a walled yard for camels and carts.
- Up and out: in the desert towns havelis grew upward, because space was precious, and outward through jharokhas, projecting balconies for watching the street unseen.
- More on the plan: our journal piece what is a haveli.
- The builders: merchants. In Shekhawati they were Marwari trading families, Agarwals and Maheshwaris, who grew rich on the caravan routes.
- Following the money: when trade moved to the British ports in the nineteenth century, they followed it to Calcutta and Bombay, and became some of the great business houses of modern India.
- Fortunes sent home: between roughly 1830 and 1930 they paid local masons and painters to cover their houses with frescoes, from Krishna and the gopis to steam trains, motorcars and Englishmen in top hats.
- Bikaner's accent: in Bikaner, Jain and Marwari merchants on the caravan road between Central Asia and Gujarat built in red Dulmera sandstone, carved so finely it looks like lace.
- Jaisalmer's: in Jaisalmer, merchants who taxed and traded along the desert road to Sindh spent their wealth on yellow sandstone facades that travellers still stop to stare at.
- Same idea: three landscapes, three building stones.
- The forts as backdrop: the merchants always settled under a fort's protection, so you see the great forts too. But here the havelis are the play.
Day by day along the trail
- Jaipur to Samode
- About 40 km, roughly an hour
- Jaipur to Mandawa
- About 170 km, roughly four hours
- Mandawa to Fatehpur
- About 20 km
- Churu to Bikaner
- About 190 km, three and a half hours
- Bikaner to Jaisalmer
- Five to six hours
- Jaisalmer to Jodhpur
- About 285 km, around five hours
Days 1-2: Jaipur, a city of townhouses
Settle in: arrive in Jaipur and check into a haveli inside the walled city.
First evening: walk to Badi Chaupar as the pink walls turn to rose and families come out for kulfi.
- A planned city: Jaipur was laid out in 1727 with its bazaars sorted by trade. Nobles and merchants built townhouses along them, and many still stand above the shopfronts, carved and screened.
- Hawa Mahal after sunrise: built in 1799 so the women of the royal household could watch the street unseen. It is really a giant jharokha, the same idea as every merchant's balcony on this trail.
- The rastas: walk the trade lanes with a guide who grew up in them: lac bangles on Maniharon ka Rasta, jewellers in Johari Bazaar.
- Amer after lunch: the Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing, set in a restored haveli, and Panna Meena ka Kund, the geometric stepwell nearby.
- The City Palace: a private tour in the late afternoon of the City Palace, where the king's own courtyard house shows what every merchant was trying to echo.
Day 3: Samode, then the road to Mandawa
Samode: about 40 kilometres out, Samode's palace in the Aravalli hills holds a painted Durbar Hall and a Sheesh Mahal that rival anything in the city.
The overture: it is the perfect introduction to Shekhawati. Lunch there.
- Into Shekhawat country: drive on through flat, sandy country to Mandawa, about three and a half to four hours from Jaipur in all.
- The four o'clock loop: after a rest, walk out from the castle with your guide.
- The famous walls: the gold-painted room of the Jhunjhunwala Haveli, the Murmuria Haveli with Nehru on horseback and King George V on its walls, and the Ladia murals.
- The Harlalka well: end there as the rooftops turn gold, then dinner in the castle courtyard with folk musicians.
Day 4: Mandawa's quiet lanes, and Fatehpur
Tea on the ramparts: at sunrise, then walk the outer lanes before the day-trippers arrive.
The Chokhani Double Haveli: with its twin wings.
- The Binsidhar Newatia Haveli: its painters recorded a flying machine and a man on a telephone, almost certainly copied from magazines sent back from Calcutta.
- Where the lanes go to sand: in the outer town, many havelis are locked or lived in by a caretaker's family.
- Fatehpur: after lunch and a rest, drive twenty minutes to Fatehpur, founded by the Kaimkhani nawab Fateh Khan in the fifteenth century, with some of the region's earliest painted havelis.
- A restoration: its best-known haveli was bought and restored by the French artist Nadine Le Prince, and shows what careful work can achieve.
- Moving and sobering: many of Fatehpur's other havelis stand empty and fading.
Day 5: Nawalgarh and the museum havelis
Nawalgarh: about 30 kilometres from Mandawa, Nawalgarh was founded by Thakur Nawal Singh in 1737, and has more fine havelis than anywhere else in the region.
The Podar Haveli Museum: begin at the Dr Ramnath A. Podar Haveli Museum, its courtyards painted from floor to eaves.
- Then: the Morarka Haveli, and the Aath Haveli, a group of eight mansions where you can see painters competing street by street.
- Afternoon choices: Dundlod, with its small fort, or Ramgarh, a town of the Podar family with a remarkable group of painted chhatris, the domed memorial pavilions.
- Or the pool: simply go back to the castle. An hour's drive links most of the region's havelis.
Day 6: Churu, then west to Bikaner
Churu: drive north-west to Churu, about an hour from Mandawa, on the edge of the dunes.
A different kingdom: Churu belonged to Bikaner rather than the Shekhawats, and its havelis feel taller and more austere.
- The facades: the Surana haveli, with its hundreds of small windows, and the painted Kanhaiya Lal Bagla haveli.
- For wildlife lovers: the blackbuck grasslands of Tal Chhapar are close by.
- West into the Thar: plan for most of the afternoon on the road to Bikaner, arriving for tea in the courtyard of your haveli hotel in the old city.
Day 7: Bikaner, red stone lace
Junagarh at opening time: spend the morning in Junagarh, built between 1589 and 1594 and never taken by siege.
Never looted: so its rooms survive, from the Anup Mahal in red and gold to the Badal Mahal painted with rain clouds.
- The royal benchmark: Bikaner's merchants measured their own houses against it.
- The Rampuria havelis: in the late afternoon light, built by a family of Jain merchants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with Rajput carving outside and European tiles, chandeliers and stained glass inside.
- Bhandasar Jain temple: Bikaner people will tell you its builder mixed ghee into the mortar instead of water.
- Usta work: meet an artist of the raised gold-leaf painting of the Bikaner court, and stop for fresh bhujia on the way back.
Days 8-9: Jaisalmer, the golden facades
Across the desert: about five to six hours, timed to arrive in the late afternoon as the fort turns gold.
Vyas Chhatri: on the ridge for the half hour after sunset, when the fort lights come on one by one.
- Patwon ki Haveli first: before the lane fills, Patwon ki Haveli, the five houses the merchant Guman Chand Patwa began in 1805, one for each son.
- Salim Singh ki Haveli: Salim Singh ki Haveli, the house of a feared nineteenth-century prime minister, its top storey flaring out on brackets carved as peacocks.
- Nathmal ki Haveli: carved around 1885 by two brothers, one taking each half.
- The fort: climb in for the Jain temples during morning worship.
- Bada Bagh at sunset: after a long rest, among the royal cenotaphs.
- Supper with music: in a courtyard with Manganiyar musicians, paid properly and directly, over ker sangri and bajra roti.
Days 10-11: Jodhpur, the blue city
The drive east: to Jodhpur, about five hours through Marwar's farming villages.
The blue lanes: in the late afternoon, with a guide, where families have built close together on the slopes below the fort for centuries.
- Toorji ka Jhalra: the rose-red stepwell built around 1740 by a queen of Maharaja Abhay Singh.
- As the lights come on: the clock tower and Sardar Market.
- Mehrangarh at opening time: on your last morning, climb through the seven gates of Mehrangarh to the carved sandstone screens of its palaces, the royal answer to every merchant jharokha since Jaipur.
- Flying home: Jodhpur Airport is only a few kilometres from the centre, with direct flights to Delhi and Mumbai.
Where you'll stay: inside the havelis
- Castle Mandawa
- Built 1755, guests since around 1980
- Bhanwar Niwas
- Rampuria haveli, built in the 1920s
- Jaisalmer
- No hotels inside the fort for us
- Haveli stays
- Steep stairs, rare lifts
Jaipur: Samode Haveli
A nobleman's townhouse: Samode Haveli sits inside the walled city, with painted rooms, a dining room covered in murals and a pool in the garden.
- Close by: Hawa Mahal is a short walk away. It sets the tone for the whole trail.
- The other end of the scale: for a grand palace on your first nights, Rambagh Palace.
Shekhawati: Castle Mandawa
The fort: Castle Mandawa is the 1755 fort of Thakur Nawal Singh, opened to guests by his descendants around 1980.
A pioneer: among the first noble homes in Rajasthan to become a heritage hotel.
- The rooms: spread through towers and old apartments.
- Quieter bases: the restored fort-palace at Alsisar, and the Piramal Haveli at Bagar, a calm merchant house.
- Compare them: our guide to the haveli hotels of Shekhawati.
Bikaner: Bhanwar Niwas
Inside the red stone: Bhanwar Niwas is one of the Rampuria family's havelis in the old city, built in the 1920s in rose-coloured Dulmera sandstone and opened as a hotel by the family.
- What you get: painted rooms and a courtyard, inside the carving you came to see.
- For a palace: Laxmi Niwas Palace is part of the red Lalgarh complex outside the walls.
Jaisalmer: Suryagarh
The exception to the haveli rule: Jaisalmer's fort stands on soft rock that cannot absorb the water hotels use, and the small guest houses in the old town vary enormously.
- Suryagarh: Suryagarh, about thirteen kilometres out on the Sam road, is a modern fort in the same yellow stone, built in the old Jaisalmer manner around courtyards and a pool.
- Days and nights: you spend the days in the lanes and sleep in quiet.
- For open desert: The Serai is a tented camp off the Jodhpur road.
Jodhpur: RAAS Jodhpur
Under the walls: RAAS Jodhpur sets old haveli buildings and crisp new red sandstone wings around a pool directly beneath Mehrangarh.
- At night: the floodlit fort fills your window.
- On foot: Toorji ka Jhalra and the clock tower are a few minutes away. It is the right last night for a havelis trail.
- Like family: Ajit Bhawan, a family-run palace and one of Rajasthan's early heritage hotels, feels like staying with an old Jodhpur family.
What a haveli stay is like
In the life of a town: you wake to temple bells and the sound of brooms in the lane.
- The trade-offs: rooms vary in size, stairs are steep, lifts are rare and cars cannot always reach the door, so your bags may be carried in.
- Mobility: tell us about any concerns early.
- Read further: our pages on heritage havelis and the journal piece on the best havelis to stay in.
How to read a painted wall
True frescoes: the finest early paintings. The painters, mostly chejaras from the masons' caste who built the havelis, laid fine lime plaster in sections and painted it while wet.
Earth colours: red and yellow ochre, lamp black, lime white and precious indigo.
Polished to a shine: they rubbed the surface with smooth stones. Rajasthani masons call this polished lime work araish.
- Painters
- Chejaras, from the masons' caste
- Early technique
- True fresco on wet lime
- Polished lime
- Araish
- Late technique
- Dry plaster, imported colours
- Modern subjects
- From about 1900
- Later work: from the late nineteenth century, painters often worked on dry plaster with bright imported chemical colours, which have faded much faster.
- Over the gate: you'll usually find Ganesh, who must bless every doorway.
- On the facades: processions of elephants and horses, the merchant's claim to the standing of a Rajput.
- Krishna is everywhere: and the folk lovers Dhola and Maru ride their camel across many walls.
- The modern world arrives: from about 1900, trains with every carriage drawn, cars, gramophones, bicycles and aeroplanes, painted by men who had never left Shekhawati, from postcards and labels sent home from Calcutta.
- Go deeper: our guide to Shekhawati frescoes and our page on painted havelis.
- Look up: the best work is often under the eaves, in gateway ceilings and in small dark rooms where the colours have kept their brilliance.
- Bring: a small torch and binoculars for the high details.
- Never touch: the oils from fingers do more damage than a century of sun.
- Ask the story: which family built each haveli, and where they live now. The answer is always a story.
- Don't buy stripped antiques: carved doors, brackets or painted panels from dealers are often taken from abandoned havelis, and each sale makes the next theft more likely.
What the merchant kitchens cooked, and what to carry home
Bajra: in Shekhawati, winter kitchens run on pearl millet. Bajra roti comes thick and nutty with a lump of white butter, jaggery and a fiery garlic chutney.
Ker sangri: dried desert berries and the beans of the khejri tree, cooked with spices. It is the taste of the land, and every grandmother makes it her own way.
Why so little meat: a cooking session with a family cook explains it better than anything.
- Bikaner: bhujia, the crisp strands of fried moth bean and gram flour that carry a Geographical Indication tag, and spongy rasgullas.
- Jaisalmer: panchkuta, five desert ingredients cooked together, and in winter raabdi, a warming drink of millet and buttermilk.
- Jodhpur: the city of pyaaz kachori and the chilli fritter called mirchi bada.
- Every dish: our Rajasthani food guide.
- Bikaner's craft: usta gold-leaf work.
- Jaisalmer's: mirrorwork embroidery and appliqué from the surrounding villages.
- Jodhpur's: tie-dye.
- Straight to the makers: we take you to the families who make them, never to showrooms that pay drivers commission.
- Handwork or machine? Our shopping guide explains how to tell.
When to go
- January
- Bikaner Camel Festival
- Magh full moon
- Jaisalmer Desert Festival, usually February
- Before Holi
- Gindad stick dances in Shekhawati
- February or March
- Shekhawati Festival, in recent years
November to February, the haveli season
Perfect light: warm, dry days and soft light for reading frescoes.
- Cold nights: in December and January, sometimes near freezing in Shekhawati and Bikaner, with mist over the mustard fields at dawn. Bring a warm layer for courtyard dinners.
- February: lovely, with mustard in flower.
- Festivals: Bikaner holds its Camel Festival in January, and Jaisalmer's Desert Festival falls around the full moon of Magh, usually in February.
October and March, the shoulders
Pleasant: a little warmer in the middle of the day.
- Gindad: in the weeks before Holi in February or March, Shekhawati's men gather at night for a stick dance to the beat of the big chang drum.
- A joyful Holi: the region's is one of the most joyful and least touristic in Rajasthan. See Holi in Rajasthan.
- The Shekhawati Festival: the Shekhawati Festival has been held in February or March in recent years.
April to September
Too hot: from April the heat builds fast, and by June Churu is among the hottest places in India. We don't run this trail then.
- The short monsoon: July and August turn the fields green but bring humidity.
- Month by month: our best time to visit Rajasthan guide.
Make it yours
Shorter: just Shekhawati
Four nights: stay in the painted towns alone, between Jaipur or Delhi.
- Ready-made: our painted towns of Shekhawati journey.
- From Delhi: Mandawa is about five to six hours away, with Neemrana Fort-Palace a characterful stop on the way.
Longer: add Udaipur or a desert night
Over the hills: continue from Jodhpur via Ranakpur to Udaipur.
- Bagore ki Haveli: the eighteenth-century house of a Mewar prime minister on Gangaur Ghat holds an evening folk dance in its courtyard.
- Or a desert camp: add a night between Jaisalmer and Jodhpur.
- More desert: our desert triangle covers Jodhpur, Jaisalmer and Bikaner in more depth.
Start in Delhi
- Old Delhi's havelis: begin with a night or two in Delhi and walk the old houses of Chandni Chowk.
- Then straight to Shekhawati: the trail becomes a loop that ends with a flight from Jodhpur back to Delhi.
For textile and craft lovers
- Add the makers: a morning with the block printers of Bagru outside Jaipur, and the embroidery villages around Barmer.
- Built for it: our textile and craft trail shares much of this route.
For photographers
More light: we add a second night in Jaisalmer and time every haveli walk for the first and last hours of light.
- More ideas: our photographer's Rajasthan.
- Etiquette: our photography tips explain how to photograph people in their courtyards.
How we look after you
We are a Jaipur family, and we plan this trail the way we'd show it to our own relatives. We don't publish prices. After one conversation about your dates and interests, we send a quote and a day-by-day plan, and refine it until it feels right.
Met on arrival: at Jaipur airport or station, or in Delhi if you start there.
- One chauffeur for ten days: who knows the sandy back roads of Shekhawati and waits at the gate when the lanes are too narrow for a car.
- Local guides: in every town, who know which caretakers hold the keys and which families welcome visitors.
- Caretakers' tips: small notes handled so you never have to think about it.
- Long desert drives: broken with good stops, and timed for the evening light.
- Your planner on WhatsApp: throughout, ready to swap a town, a dinner or a day.
- No commission shopping: and no antique dealers selling stripped haveli doors.
- Built around you: every journey is shaped by the people taking it, which is why there is no fixed price list.
Who will love it, and who should choose another journey
Art and story: you'll love it if you are drawn to art, architecture and places with a story.
Alone in a courtyard: if you'd rather stand alone in a painted courtyard than queue at a famous monument.
Repeat visitors: who have seen the Golden Triangle.
- Love it
- Art, architecture and story lovers
- Also
- Repeat visitors, photographers
- Rhythm
- Dawn walk, long rest, dusk walk
- Think twice
- If you want palace hotels nightly
- Curious first-timers: who prefer small towns to big cities.
- Also: photographers, and anyone interested in how India's great business families began.
- An easy rhythm: most days involve a short walk at dawn, a long rest and another walk at dusk.
- Not for palace hunters: Shekhawati's luxury is the family heritage stay, comfortable and full of character, not polish. For palaces, take our forts and palaces grand tour.
- The famous sights: start with the classic Golden Triangle.
- Lakes and rest: Rajasthan for Two is gentler still.
