The Mandawa Group of Hotels is a privately owned hotel company, rich in heritage and history. What is unique to this group of heritage hotels is that it is a family run hotel and the 10th generation of the royal family of Mandawa still resides in the fort. Mandawa, founded by Thakur Naval Singh, a descendant of Rao Shekhaji, a princeling of the royal family of Jaipur, was a remote feudal principality in the centre of the Shekhawati region. It was a trading outpost for the ancient caravan routes that stopped here from China and the Middle East thereby attracting a large community of traders, who settled here. Later, however, when the caravan traffic ceased in the late 18th century, the traders created business empires in other parts of the country, but returned to Mandawa to build palatial mansions in their hometown.