‘How do I get to the City Palace and the fort?’, I asked the man at the reception in my hotel in Kota. In my experience, the people at the reception usually know the quickest way to point A or B – with the odd exception, of course. I once followed a receptionist’s directions down to the last U-turn and found myself at the doorstep of an old sweet shop. This would have been just fine under normal circumstances, except that I had needed to reach the railway station. Putting it down to her being new on the job, I ate some sweets and still managed to catch my train, which goes to show that all’s indeed well that ends well.
In this instance, however, the gent looked like he had been giving stunningly accurate directions to hotel guests all his life, so I felt reassured. He chewed on it for a bit and said ‘I can tell you, but since you’re new here and are planning to drive, I’d suggest that you take a rickshaw instead. The old town can be a bit...er...confusing.’ I took his advice and hailed a rickshaw, whose driver then proceeded to put on his best Takuma Sato imitation and hurtled through traffic at bowel-loosening speed. Every once in a while, he would lean out and bellow at some unfortunate vehicle that dared to block his path. He did this so loudly that a man on a moped was startled enough to topple over, upon which the driver beamed in satisfaction at a job well done. To add a pinch of aural excitement to the proceedings, his horn got stuck, as a result of which my arrival at the palace was heralded by a half-bellowing, half-screeching orchestra. I got out a bit shakily, not knowing whether to be thankful for the fact that I had taken the rickshaw (I would never have found the palace on my own) or for the fact that I was still alive. Concluding that an extended lifespan was infinitely superior to being lost, I stepped gratefully into the palace complex.
Kota’s City Palace is within the Kota fort, whose history is fairly boisterous. In 1264 (or, by another account, 1364), Kota was ruled by the Bhil tribals under their leader Koteya. Jait Singh of neighbouring Bundi defeated Koteya in the same year, cut off his head (Koteya’s, not his own) and used it in the foundation of the fort that he began to build. Successive rulers then added their own two bits to the fort, as a result of which the final structure ended up being a bit of a mish-mash, to say nothing of massive. The fort is still a much-lived in place, with numerous buildings having come up inside its battlements. As a matter of fact, large sections of the palace have been leased out to various parties – in the middle of my wanderings, I walked smack into the middle of the compound of a ladies college. It struck me that this was one way to keep heritage buildings alive; it may not have been the ideal solution, but at least they got looked after a little bit and weren’t falling to pieces completely.
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