Jaipur and its red palaces...

India first two weeks 745
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Hi everybody...

Yes get used to the fact that keeping up the blog is not the main thing of our trip and we promise we will continue to do so but accept the fact that it might take longer for the full view...

For now the entry for Jaipur, after our nice and eventful day in Varanasi we arrived in Jaipur, the capital city of Rajasthan famous for its red palaces (notably the palace of the winds). First order of business getting of our delayed train was to visit the police station to report our stolen bag. Unfortunately no pictures taken otherwise you would laugh too much! Very nice treatment but it took 1 hour to find an English speaking officer and then another 2 hours to get the report filled.

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After having arrived in our hotel (Krishna palace, real recommendation!) we settled in and had a quite evening awaiting for things to come. The next morning Maite had her long awaited experience and saw a dead body on the street! Not a really nice experience but as the body was lying on the street it seems to have been a poor guy which was dumped there (again sorry no pictures but I guess you understand why not). As we in any case still needed to go to the police station to pick up our police report (yes you were not thinking that after 3 hours we actually got the report in our hands now did you?) we reported our finding to the police. As a person really loving this country I am a bit sorry to tell you that the first reaction of the police officer when told that there was a dead body lying on the street was “oh that street that is just out of my district, please you go to blabla police station to tell them”. Obviously we made them do that part but here you can really see that it is not a rare event having a dead body on the street…

second and third week India 030
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So after having said that we would like to comment that Jaipur was really great! We spent the rest of our day going around the city and visiting all palaces. A real treat for the eyes and one can only imagine how these magnificent palaces must have been completely dressed up with curtains, carpets and furniture. Particularly the palace of winds with the whole harem present ;-). Unfortunately you will not find any pictures of the city palace on the site (yes when we load them!) as somebody might or might not have forgotten to charge the battery of the camera (honestly it was Maite). In any case we had one more unexpected nice experience which was being approached by Ali a very friendly rickshaw driver who offered us the usual tourist scam rickshaw drive to yet another palace, visit elephants and see how some of the handicraft is made (yes still no pictures for this one either). Well the tour was great as Maite was able to finally have a rickshaw ride with Indian music (he even had the music of Maite’s first Bollywood experience, Khabi Kabhi Kushi Gham!) in the background as our friend Ali had transformed his ride into a disco! The tour offered was good and the places where we saw the handicraft production was actually a nice place and not that expensive. After returning he took us to his friend for food and was honest and didn't even over charge us as he was happy with his 2% commission made on the purchase of a scarf by Maite. As we had a really nice conversation with Ali we decided to go with him the next morning to visit the fort in Amber. Again he didn't let us down and we had a wonderful morning and made our bus on time to go to Jodhpur. In case anybody traveling to Jaipur give him a call and you will be amazed (+919351514059).

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Amber was the former capital city of Rajasthan, before it was moved to Jaipur, its fort is again a wonder and here you’re going to have pictures! That’s the red fort that seems to be surrounded by the great China wall….

More later when we put the text up for Jodhpur now it is yet another day of enjoying Udaipur (yes been here now for 4 days already but still enjoying, despite the construction works going on)..