Jaipur - the pink city

carry stones on the construction site at Amber Fort
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We took a very early morning train to Jaipur and arrived at about 11am, we went straight to our lovely hotel (majority of the hotels here have been really nice, cheap and unique places to stay. By the time we got to Jaipur we were both feeling pretty ill (nothing major, just run down with a cold and sore throat). We had a pretty quiet first day which consisted of a long nap and a visit to the City Palace. The Palace was very nice, and we saw the world’s largest silver items which are these 2 huge silver pots that are in the Guinness book of world records – very exciting I know. Since we had a relatively slow first day we decided to do another bus tour on our second day so we could squeeze in more sights in a shorter amount of time. Jaipur, also known as 'the Pink City,' is the capital of Rajasthan in India. It was originally yellow, but the Prince of Wales visited in 1876 and they painted it pink to celebrate and it has been pink ever since. Bill Clinton came in the nineties and they gave it a face lift then as well. ‘Pink’ is a relative term b/c it’s more like a terra-cotta colour, but the ‘terra-cotta city’ doesn’t sound so catchy.

Floating palace
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Once again our bus tour was…you guessed it, all Hindi speaking! There was actually another Indian man from the south that didn’t speak Hindi (they have their own language) so he got the tid-bits of English along with us. We went to the Amber fort, which was pretty much just the bones, they didn’t have a museum or anything. After we saw the fort we came back down to find our bus and we saw our first elephant walking in the street! Mark and I were so excited we ran off the bus (which was parked) and ran after it to get a closer look. It was awesome – huge big thing. We must have looked like idiots chasing this thing down the street but we didn’t care. Our Indian friend we met on the tour thought it was so funny that we got excited over monkeys and elephants and he couldn’t believe we didn’t have them in our respective countries…or that we didn’t live with our parents for that matter! He told us that it is most common for a new bride and groom to live with the groom’s family…forever. But that it is acceptable to move if your job requires it.

sundails
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Our tour also took us to the Jal Mahal (or the Water Palace). It sits in the center of the Maan-sarovar Lake. The lake is often dry in the summer but winter monsoons frequently turn it into a beautiful lake. We had these hilarious kids hassling us for money b/c they wanted their pictures taken, so after a while Mark said ‘enough, geez-peace’ (give us peace) and they then proceeded to follow him and repeat that phrase over and over again – so funny. We also saw Jantar Mantar is the biggest of five astronomical observatory build by Maharaja Jai Singh during the period 1727-1734 in north India. The observatory consists of fourteen major geometric devices (or yantra in Hindi) for measuring time, predicting eclipses, tracking stars in their orbits, ascertaining the declinations of planets, and determining the celestial altitudes etc. They were really cool – Jaipur time is also 12 minutes slower than normal Indian time – not quite sure the reason for that…probably just became and excuse for being late all the time. We also saw the beautiful Birla temple dedicated to Shiva. One of the last things we saw was the Hawa Mahal (or Palace of breeze) was built in 1799 by Maharaja Sawai Singh as part of City Palace. It was an extension of the Zenana (women) chamber. Its purpose was to allow royal ladies to observe everyday life in the street below without being seen. It is a five storey high red sandstone structure complete with over 950 windows. The breeze (or hawa in Hindi) circulates through these windows giving the palace its name. Tourists are not allowed to go inside the palace, but the outside was beautiful.  Jaipur is one of the more popular places in India to visit but I think I have to rate the blue city of Jodhpur a wee bit higher, we were ready to move on by the time our train arrived.