July 31 - India: Jaipur, Rajasthan - "The Pink City"
We woke up and had breakfast at the hotel in a beautiful little room whose walls and ceilings were covered with Indian paintwork. I would say "stencils" except that you could see the pencil marks where someone had drawn out the designs beforehand. Quite lovely. Breakfast, however, was another matter as they didn't have eggs or anything. So I had corn flakes and Jon had toast.
Amber Fort
The Old Fort is in Amber, which is the ancient capital of Jaipur State. The fort-palace was built in 1562 by Maharaja Man Singh. It was later added to and completed by the Jai Singhs before they moved to Jaipur. The fort is on the top of a hill overlooking Amber and Jaipur. To get to the top of the hill, you can either climb up the steps (about a 10 minute climb), or pay a ridiculous amount of money for an elephant ride to the top. Given our shopping spree of yesterday, Jon and I decided to do the walk.
We got to the fort at around 9:15, and while our climb was a different path than the elephant walk we passed across their path twice. The morning is elephant rush hour because this is when all the tourists show up. And the elephant owners are much like taxi drivers - if they go too slow, they miss out on potential fares. So the funny thing was to sit and watch the elephants pass each other as the "drivers" did whatever they could to get their elephants to speed up. Some of the elephants seemed to be blissfully oblivious of the need to rush, and their drivers made funny yelling noises to get them to hurry.
In the Palace-Fort we walked around and looked at the beautiful inlaid marble work. Mirrors and silver are a definite Rhajastan-influenced decoration and we see little mirrors in many of the clothing designs here as well. There's also a Hall of Pleasure (Sukh Niwas) that has a channel running right through the room which once carried water naturally cooled by the marble. Pretty cool to see what they could do without electricity!
Lonely Planet gave us some basic descriptions of the main halls of the Palace-Fort, but we decided to do some of our own exploring. Of course, we didn't realize how deep the alleyways and side rooms went as we walked through some very unadorned (and graffitied) parts of the complex. Next thing we knew, we were in some far unknown part of the fort and hadn't seen another tourist for about 20 minutes. It was actually kind of gross - the rooms were strewn with trash and smelled like toilets. But we finally found our way back after a few harrowing minutes. We finished up our trip and headed back down the hill to meet Vinod, our driver.
Wonderful View from the Fort
Pick-up Goodies
Vinod took us back to the shops to pick up some items we had made for us - a tablecloth at the textile shop and a charm at the jewelry shop. They were both wonderful and we were very happy! (Note my new custom-made sarong in the picture above!)
Royal Gaitor
No, this isn't an alligator. These are the cenotaphs, or funeral pyres, of the Majaranis. They were built solely to burn the remains, and stand as a testament to the greatness of each ruler. Surprisingly, the Indian Government does not charge for this site (whereas they take money from foreigners every other chance they get) and it's pleasantly free of the throngs of tour busses we've seen everywhere else. There are, however, throngs of little children asking for money, chocolate, and pens, but we're getting used to being barraged every time we look around.
The grounds-keeper showed us around the cenotaphs for a few Rupees, and pointed out some very interesting facts about the buildings. For example, the statues erected in the Maharaja Jia Signh II's gaitor, which is 300 years old. One of the statue is of one of the Maharaja's wife, with 3 children and one on the way. Literally, the statue is pregnant! We spent about an hour looking around at the beautiful marble details and then went on our way.
Lunch at Rainbow
Rainbow was a yummy restaurant that specializes in vegetarian dishes, but has other dishes as well. I had a delicious cashew curry dish, and Jon had a curry rice mixture that was very good.
City Palace
City Palace is still owned by the royal family, and some of the family still resides in part of it. We wandered around for a while, but were distracted because part of the courtyard was sectioned off for some sort of "festival". Actually, it was for the appearance of a guru with "healing hands" and apparently people had been waiting outside all day for him. We found a place on some steps where we could glance over the separators to see inside, but got tired of waiting and continued on. We went to the arms museum and saw lots of knives, guns, swords, and other Indian arms. We also went to the textile museum, which contains different clothing worn by the Maharajas and their wives. On our way out of the textile museum, we had a good view of the "healing guru" who was touching everyone who lined up to see him. I hope it worked for someone (if even mentally) as they had clearly been waiting for hours.
Jantar Mantar
The Maharaja Jai Singh II is considered the "father" of Jaipur. He was also a passionate astronomer. He sent scholars abroad to study foreign observatories in order to build himself five observatories. The Jaipur observatory is the largest and best preserved. Each construction has a specific purpose, such as measuring the positions of the stars, altitudes, and calculating eclipses. There is a beautiful sundial that's 27 meters high and is very, very accurate. We had a great time looking around, but were too hot to stay for very long.
Jantar Mantar Observatory
Dinner at Copper Chimney
We and another couple were literally the only people in this wonderful restaurant. We sat and looked out the window onto the street below while we ate dinner. One family of street people saw us and - when they couldn't get our attention with their yelling - sat down and staked us out until we left. Vinod dropped us off at an Internet Cafe down the street from our hotel, and then we went to bed.