Day Three: Jaipur

On the last day of our trip, we were in Jaipur. Since we only had one day (and a relatively short one at that) we didn't think we would be able to see much. The night before and in the morning before taking off, we were looking in the book and chose a couple of things that we figured we could do. When we met up with our driver, he recommended a tour guide for the day free of charge (I'm not completely sure how that works but we weren't going to complain, we did tip him at the end of the day). We said sure. I think it also helped the driver because I'm not sure how well he knew the city to get around.

Jaipur is knows as the Pink City because the walled city part is made entirely of sandstone which gives it a pickish color. The royal parts of the city were made of something else though because it was yellow which was a handy way to knowing what belonged to the royal family.

The first thing we saw was called Hawa Mahal or Palace of Winds. It was right on the street surrounded by all the little shops and people selling stuff. It was really wide but only one room deep and covered with windows of a sort. It was built for the veiled ladies of the Harem to be able to see what was going on in the market without being seen. So the windows were made so you can see out but not be seen. This is pretty common in the Muslim architecture in the area. I'm not completely sure why but we didn't go in this one, we only saw it from the street.

From there we went to Jantar Mantar which is an observatory of sorts. There were five of them built around India but this one is the largest and in the best shape. There were all kinds of large stone instruments used to tell time, chart the constellations, and planets, draw up horoscopes and calculate he angles of starts and planet from the equator. They were all really accurate and we could see the ones that use the sun in action. It was so cool that I had to remind Jason to take pictures. If it weren't so hot we would have spent more time there but it was really hot and there wasn't much shade.

From there we went to the City Palace. There were four parts that we went to: the museum that used to be a guest house and now has textiles, an open columned area with some big silver urns, a courtyard with ornate doorways and a shop with crafts in action. The museum with the textiles has clothes from the royal family. The most impressive was the outfit from the guy that was seven feet tall and so fat that his pants were wider than they were tall (I don't remember how wide). Another interesting thing was to see their woolen winter clothes. I guess it can get cold there although that was hard to fathom as we were sweltering. The big silver urns are in the Guinness Book of World Record as the largest silver objects and were used to carry water from the Ganges to London. I can only assume the Ganges was cleaner back then but probably not. Sacredness is not determined by cleanliness I suppose. One weird thing about the urns is the guy that was in our picture. I believe he is a guard but he seems to only stand around and jump in people's pictures then ask for a tip. Strange. The courtyard is outside the current palace (which we could have gone into for the same amount of money each as our hotel room cost) and has four different doorways. Each one is intricately decorated and depicts the different seasons. Of course their seasons are different here: the peacock season, the flower season, the sun season and the harvest season. In the shop, we sat and watched a man show us how they painted the miniature paintings that Rajasthan is famous for. He would take a colored stone and rub it on his table top (maybe marble) then add water and it would become like a watercolor paint. Then he had a really fine brush that was one hair thick at the tip.

Now it was time to leave the walled city. We stopped briefly and looked at the Water Palace. It's built out in the middle of the late and looks like it's just sitting on the water. There was no shade here so we left sleeping Anna in the air conditioned car and stepped out briefly to look and take quick pictures before moving on.

Then we drove up to the Amber Fort. I was worried we wouldn't be able to see it because I couldn't tell how far out of town it was and I didn't know how much time we would have. Fortunately, it's not too far and we moved quickly through the rest of the place (we don't dilly dally). It was up on top of the hill and the drive up was pretty. The view from the top was beautiful. We couldn't drive all the way up so we were dropped off and had to walk up the rest of the way. The fort palace was used as the citadel before the capital moved to Jaipur but rulers kept coming up on special occasions. After we got inside, I thought that the royal families would have been in good shape until I remembered that they were probably carried up by servants.

The fort was in the process of renovation so parts of it were amazing and parts were less than stellar. We walked all over it and I must confess I don't remember what everything was but it was cool. There were a lot of paintings on the walls that were being renovated and some beautiful inlay. One really ornate room we couldn't go in because it was too delicate.

Surprisingly, after all of this, we still had time so we did a little shopping (apparently guides can be a good call). Mostly we looked around but we did end up buying me a turquoise necklace. Anna already loves it. Then it was time to go to the train station to head home. While we were waiting for it, I looked at the board to see when it was due to arrive and noticed that were had misread the time by about 4 hours (stupid 24 hour time). So, rather than wait around in the hot, stuffy station, we took a rickshaw back to our hotel. We had already checked out but they have a roof-top restaurant so we hung out up there and ate a bit and rested. Then we took a rickshaw back to the station and caught our train.