A journey through the hands of Rajasthan
The point of the journey is not shopping, although you will come home with a great deal. It is meeting the makers. By the end you will see Rajasthan's colours differently, and you'll know exactly what you are paying for.
Two roots: Rajasthan's crafts grew out of royal courts that wanted beautiful things, and a desert people who wanted colour against the sand.
Families near the palaces: the kings of Jaipur, Udaipur, Bundi and Jodhpur invited painters, jewellers, printers and weavers to settle nearby, and many of those families still work in the same towns.
- Nights
- Twelve
- Pace
- Mornings in workshops, afternoons free
- Best months
- October to March
- Good for
- Textile lovers, designers, collectors
- Starts
- Jaipur
- Ends
- Jodhpur
- Streets for trades: in Jaipur, Sawai Jai Singh II gave whole streets to particular trades when he laid out the city in 1727.
- In the villages: printers, dyers and weavers have passed their methods from parent to child for generations.
- Jaipur: the capital of block printing, blue pottery, gems and enamel.
- Bundi: a small painted kingdom with its own school of miniature painting, near the looms of Kota Doria.
- Udaipur: Mewar's painters still work in old-city studios, and the pichwai artists of Nathdwara paint cloth hangings for Krishna.
- Jodhpur: the heart of Marwar's tie-dye, durries and leather.
- What you will do: sit on a workshop floor while a master carves a block, help a dyer lift cloth from an indigo vat, and watch a painter grind a mineral pigment on a stone.
- What you will learn: why real hand-tied bandhani has tiny irregular dots, and why a good block print shows faint joins where one impression meets the next.
- An honest route: Rajasthan's craft trade is full of commission showrooms and machine prints sold as handwork. Our guides are paid never to play that game.
- Paid either way: every workshop is one we know, run by families paid fairly for their time, whether or not you buy anything.
Day by day, from the printing tables to the looms
- Jaipur to Bundi
- About four hours
- Bundi to Kaithoon
- About an hour
- Bundi to Udaipur
- Five to six hours, via Chittorgarh
- Udaipur to Nathdwara
- About an hour
- Udaipur to Jodhpur
- Five to six hours, via Ranakpur
- Jodhpur to Salawas
- About half an hour
Days 1 to 4: Jaipur, printers, potters and gem cutters
First evening: walk the walled city's bazaars as the lights come on, with a guide who explains how the rastas, the lanes given to particular trades, still sort themselves nearly three hundred years on.
Maniharon ka Rasta: families shape lac bangles over charcoal fires and press glass and stones into the warm lac.
Day two, block printing: start at the Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing, in a restored haveli at Amer, where a carver shows how teak or sheesham blocks are cut.
- Bagru: printing families stamp cotton in earthy indigo, iron black and pomegranate red, using dabu, a mud resist, to keep parts of the cloth from the dye. You print your own length.
- Sanganer: closer to the city, with finer floral prints on white, and handmade paper.
- Day three, blue pottery: made from quartz rather than clay and painted in cobalt and turquoise, in a working studio.
- Saved from extinction: blue pottery nearly died out in the twentieth century and survives largely because the artist Kripal Singh Shekhawat and others revived it.
- Gems and jewellery: Jaipur is one of the great centres for cutting coloured stones, especially emeralds. Behind Johari Bazaar you watch stones cut and polished.
- Meenakari: enamel fired in bright reds and greens, with family jewellers we have known for decades.
- Day four, textiles and dress: leheriya and bandhani in the old city, the light hand-quilted Jaipuri razai, and an afternoon with a tailor if you want something made.
- First parcel: we arrange shipping from workshops we trust.
Days 5 and 6: Bundi, painted walls and the Kota Doria looms
About four hours south of Jaipur: arrive for lunch at a heritage haveli.
Late afternoon: the lanes of the blue old town, where the bazaar is a working one, selling bridal bangles, turban cloth and steel pots rather than souvenirs.
- Day six, the Chitrashala: the mid-eighteenth-century picture gallery of the Garh Palace.
- Its murals: turquoise and green scenes of Krishna, monsoon storms and royal processions, some of the finest in Rajasthan.
- A Bundi painter: one of the few who still work in the style, grinding mineral colours and making brushes by hand.
- About an hour to Kaithoon near Kota: weavers make Kota Doria, a gossamer cotton, sometimes mixed with silk, woven in a fine square check.
- Read first: our journal piece on Kota Doria weaving explains how to tell handloom from powerloom.
Days 7 to 9: Udaipur, miniatures, pichwai and terracotta
A long day: Bundi to Udaipur is five to six hours of driving, so we break it at Chittorgarh for the great fort and lunch.
Bassi: Kumawat families carve and paint the kavad, a portable wooden shrine with folding doors that storytellers open panel by panel as they tell the epics.
Akola: one of the last villages making dabu mud-resist prints.
- Arrival: in time for a sunset boat on Lake Pichola.
- Day eight, miniature painting: first the City Palace museum, with the large court paintings of the Maharanas at festivals, hunts and boat parties.
- An old-city studio: painters still use mineral and plant pigments, squirrel-hair brushes and burnished paper. You try a line or two.
- Afternoon: a silversmith, or the bookbinders and puppet makers in the lanes near Jagdish Temple.
- Day nine, Nathdwara: about an hour north, home of the image of Shrinathji, Krishna as a child holding up a mountain.
- Pichwai: the large painted cloths hung behind the deity, each for a particular festival or season. Watch the painters at work on cows, lotuses and gopis.
- Molela: a nearby village making votive terracotta plaques of gods and folk heroes.
- Evening lamps: back through Eklingji.
Days 10 to 12: Jodhpur, tie-dye, durries and leather
Udaipur to Jodhpur: five to six hours of driving, broken at Ranakpur, whose carved marble pillars show what stone craftsmen could do in the fifteenth century.
Evening: the clock tower market, where cloth, spices and bangles are sold in equal measure.
Day eleven, tie-dye: Marwar is one of the homes of bandhani, thousands of tiny knots pinched into the cloth before dyeing, and leheriya, the wave pattern of the monsoon.
- Around the clock tower: women still sit pinching cloth into dots with a fingernail grown long for the purpose.
- A tying and dyeing family: for the morning, then a safa maker for the tie-dyed turbans of Marwar.
- A turban-tying lesson: to finish.
- The bandhgala: Jodhpur's tailors make the high-collared jacket in a few days if you order early.
- Day twelve, Salawas: half an hour south of the city, durries, flat cotton and wool rugs, are woven on pit looms in family courtyards.
- The Bishnoi villages: potters at their wheels while blackbuck graze near the houses.
- Last afternoon: embroidered mojari slippers and silver in the old city, then a farewell dinner.
- Day thirteen: fly from Jodhpur to Delhi or Mumbai.
How to tell the real thing
- Block print
- Faint joins, dye through to the back
- Bandhani
- Raised dots, a point at each centre
- Blue pottery
- Light, quartz-based, painted by hand
- Kota Doria
- Slightly irregular checks
- Durrie
- Back mirrors the front
Hand block printing
Never perfect: look for faint joins where one impression meets the next, small variations in colour, and dye soaked through to the back.
- Screen and machine prints: crisp, flat and identical along the whole length.
- Natural dyes: indigo and iron black fade softly with washing rather than bleeding.
Bandhani and leheriya
Hand-tied bandhani: tiny dots with a slightly raised, crinkled feel, each with a faint point at its centre where the knot was tied, and no two quite the same.
- Printed imitations: flat, with perfect circles.
- Leheriya: made by rolling and binding the cloth before dyeing. The diagonal stripes should show slight irregularities and a soft edge.
Blue pottery
Quartz, not clay: so it is light, slightly translucent at the edges and fired at a low temperature.
- Painted by hand: usually cobalt blue and turquoise on white.
- Warning signs: heavy, thick pieces with perfectly repeated patterns are often factory ceramics.
Kota Doria
The khat: a fine, airy square check, slightly irregular in handloom.
- Hold it to the light: powerloom copies are stiffer and perfectly even.
- See the loom: our guides take you to weavers whose looms you can see.
Miniature painting and pichwai
Days or weeks of work: that is what a good miniature takes.
- Use a magnifying glass: on faces, jewellery and borders. Fine work stays crisp at close range, and mineral colours have a soft, chalky depth.
- Touched-up prints: many shop pieces are prints touched up with paint.
- For pichwai too: ask the painter how long a piece took and which festival it shows. A real artist will happily tell you.
Durries, mojaris and lac
A Salawas pit-loom durrie: heavy and flat, with the pattern woven right through so the back mirrors the front, and edges finished by hand.
- Real mojaris: stitched leather, stiff at first and softening with wear, with the embroidery on leather, not glued plastic.
- Lac bangles: warm to the touch and slightly soft, with stones pressed in by hand. Glass and plastic copies are cold, hard and identical.
Gems and silver
Buy from established family jewellers: who give a written description of what you are buying. Ask about certification for significant purchases.
- Never as an investment: from strangers.
- Jaipur's oldest scam: never agree to carry gems abroad for someone you've just met.
- The rest: our Jaipur gem shopping tips.
Buying well, and paying fairly
The oldest trap: a friendly driver, guide or stranger suggests a 'cooperative' or a 'government emporium', the prices are high, and a large share goes to the person who brought you.
On this journey: you buy directly from the families who make things, or from a few shops we trust.
Nobody in our team takes a commission: the only way we know to make sure the money reaches the hands that did the work.
- Bargaining: normal in bazaars, but not with the makers themselves.
- In a workshop: the price usually reflects days of work and is fair.
- In the old-city markets: a smile and a polite walk-away usually find the right number.
- Never feel obliged: the families we visit are paid for their time whether or not you shop, and would rather you left happy than left with something you don't want.
- Packing and shipping: we arrange it from the workshops we trust, with tracking, so you don't have to carry rugs and quilts home.
- Large purchases: for a hand-knotted carpet we explain how to check knots and dyes. Our journal piece on how to buy a rug is a good start.
- Buying guides: our block print buying guide, blue pottery buying guide and wider shopping guide.
- Meet the families: our page on the artisans we work with.
Where you'll stay
- Jaipur
- Samode Haveli or Rambagh Palace
- Bundi
- Haveli Braj Bhushanjee
- Udaipur
- Fateh Prakash or Shiv Niwas Palace
- Jodhpur
- Ajit Bhawan or RAAS Jodhpur
Jaipur: Samode Haveli or Rambagh Palace
Samode Haveli: a nobleman's townhouse inside the walled city, with painted rooms and a muralled dining room, a short walk from the craft lanes.
- Rambagh Palace: the grand alternative, the former home of Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II and Maharani Gayatri Devi.
- The rest: our guide to luxury hotels in Jaipur.
Bundi: a painted haveli
Havelis, not palaces: Bundi has heritage havelis rather than palace hotels.
- Haveli Braj Bhushanjee: just below the Garh Palace, a painted family house with murals and miniatures in its rooms and a vegetarian kitchen. The family know the town's painters well.
- Read more: our guide to Bundi's heritage havelis.
Udaipur: inside the City Palace
Fateh Prakash Palace and Shiv Niwas Palace: within the City Palace complex.
- A craft lesson of a different kind: Fateh Prakash holds the Durbar Hall and the Crystal Gallery of English crystal furniture ordered by Maharana Sajjan Singh.
- For lakeside calm: The Oberoi Udaivilas and the Taj Lake Palace.
Jodhpur: Ajit Bhawan or RAAS
Ajit Bhawan: built for a younger brother of Maharaja Umaid Singh, family-run, like staying with an old Jodhpur household.
- RAAS Jodhpur: in the old city under Mehrangarh, minutes from the clock tower and the tie-dyers' lanes.
- The grand finale: Umaid Bhawan Palace, with its Art Deco interiors.
When to go
October to March: comfortable for long mornings in courtyards and workshops, and the dyers work happily in the dry air.
December and January: cold mornings, so the printing tables may start a little later.
February and March: lovely months for this journey, warm and bright.
- Season
- October to March
- Lovely months
- February and March
- Very hot
- April to June, often above 40°C
- Monsoon
- Printers pause, leheriya and Teej
- Shilpgram fair
- Udaipur, each December
- April to June: very hot, and some workshops slow down.
- The monsoon, July to September: block printers often pause because cloth will not dry, but it is the season of leheriya and Teej.
- Before Teej: in July or August, the bazaars fill with green and pink leheriya, and women buy new saris and bangles.
- Before Diwali: in October or November, markets glitter and families buy new clothes, silver and household goods.
- Shilpgram: the crafts village west of Fateh Sagar in Udaipur, run by the West Zone Cultural Centre, hosts a large crafts fair each December with makers from across western India.
- The wedding season, November to February: Rajasthan's dress at its finest. A wedding procession shows the year's best bandhani, safas and silver in a single street.
- What everyone is wearing: our guide to Rajasthani dress and textiles.
Make it yours: shorter, longer and further
Eight nights
- Drop Bundi: keep Jaipur and Jodhpur, fly from Jaipur to Udaipur and drive on to Jodhpur via Ranakpur.
- The trade: you keep block printing, painting, pichwai and tie-dye, and lose the looms of Kota Doria.
Kutch, the great textile land
Four or five nights in Kutch, Gujarat: ajrakh resist printing, mirror embroidery, bandhani and weaving in villages around Bhuj.
- One of the richest craft regions in India: our Rajasthan and Kutch journey shows how the two fit together.
- Where to sleep: our page on luxury stays in Kutch.
Barmer and the desert embroidery
- Barmer: from Jodhpur or Jaisalmer, the home of desert embroidery and appliqué, made by women in the villages of the far west.
- For committed textile lovers: it is a long drive, with simple accommodation.
Shekhawati's painted walls
- Two nights before Jaipur: in Shekhawati, where merchants covered their havelis in frescoes of gods, trains and motor cars.
- The region explained: our painted towns of Shekhawati journey.
A deeper workshop
- Whole days with one craft: three days at a printing table, or a week with a miniature painter.
- Tell us early: we can arrange longer stays with families we know.
How we look after you
A private chauffeur: for the whole journey, with room for the parcels you'll gather along the way.
Local guides: who know the craft families personally, translate the conversation and explain the techniques.
- Driver
- Private chauffeur, room for parcels
- Guides
- Know the craft families personally
- Workshops
- Booked ahead, families paid
- Shipping
- Tracked, from trusted workshops
- Prices
- Quoted after one conversation
- Visits arranged in advance: so families are expecting you and paid for their time.
- Packing and shipping: from trusted workshops, with tracking to your door.
- Flights or trains: where they save time, and airport meetings at each end.
- Your own planner on WhatsApp: throughout, who can add another morning with a maker you've fallen for.
- No prices here: we quote after one conversation about the crafts that interest you most, and how hands-on you'd like to be.
Who will love this journey, and who might not
It suits: designers, collectors, textile lovers, artists, quilters, interior decorators and anyone who would rather spend a morning in a workshop than queue at a monument.
And travellers who: enjoy conversation through a translator, are happy to sit on a workshop floor, and want to know where their money goes.
- Wonderful together: for friends travelling as a group, and for a mother and daughter who share a love of cloth.
- Less suited: to travellers who want the great forts and palaces as the focus, or a lot of wildlife.
- Monuments first: choose our Royal Rajputana, which includes plenty of craft along the way.
- Food and markets: our food lover's Rajasthan is a natural companion.
- Shopping well on any journey: our textile shopping page explains how we arrange it.
