04/12/2025
Bundi and the Temple of Almost-Doom
🐒🐅
We arrived in Bundi, a sleepy little town known for its beautiful stepwells, crumbling fort, and ancient cliff palace, and stayed in a STUNNING heritage home hosted by the Steve Irwin of India -
We settled in, bought tickets for the old palace and fort and - RARE India moment - hardly saw another human all day. Eerie, but kinda Indiana Jonesey - casually wandering around these huge, empty, ancient spaces.
The ticket included the fort, so naturally we continued up the path… which quickly turned into uneven, crumbling bricks straight out of Return to Oz.
No 'Wheelers' or flying monkeys here, but plenty of red-butt monkeys (the angry, bitey ones), so we armed ourselves with sticks (as we'd seen the villagers do many a time) and kept walking through this heavily guarded abandoned terrain. Obvs!
At the fort gate, two official-looking guys stopped us to check our tickets. They asked if we had friends coming. We said no (🤦🏻♀️). They looked confused. Looked at our sticks. Looked at us. I explained about the monkeys 🐒🐒🐒🐒
“It’s not the monkeys you need to worry about… it’s the TIGERS.” 'Rarrrr' he gestured with tiger-paw motion.
Right. Tigers.
Of course we continued anyway 🙃 until the combination of monkeys, collapsing steps, and the threat of big cats finally made us turn back. And...were those guys really official...?
Later, when we told our host where we’d been, his eyes nearly fell out of his head.
“You went alone? No one goes up there. There are tigers.” Over the next few days, we told a few more locals who shared similar feelings of disbelief.
Well, yes...they're selling tickets!!!! 🤣
To celebrate our near death escape, Jeri sorted us out with a rooftop dinner with a bottle of wine! Only we could turn a quiet Bundi sightseeing day into an accidental tiger trek.
Indie would be proud!
