Jumping Jaipur

Our friend Raj, the bicycle rickshaw guy nicknamed James Bond, biked the two of us and our two huge bags to the bus station without even breathing heavy. We were headed to the capital of Rajasthan, Jaipur. This city is known as the pink city because of the colour of its buildings (actually more of a peachy brown). The city is very colourful with carts pulled by all manner of creature ... camel (our favorite), donkey, mule, horse, ox, buffalo and man, jam packed streets, women in brightly coloured Rajasthani fashions and Rajput men with huge, bright turbans and mammoth handlebar mustaches. We stayed at the nice Hotel Pearl Palace outside the walled Old City. The hotel is on a quiet residential street filled with cows picking through the garbage, kids playing and located next to a large fort.

We set off on foot the next morning into the Old City. The avenues are wide and run straight so it is fairly easy to find ones way about. We saw the heaven Piercing Minaret, walked through the colourful bazaar and took in the City Palace Complex. Inside the palace are a number of museums. One contains exquisite royal costumes including the voluminous outfit of Maharajah Singh I who weighed 250 kg (550 lbs.). Exquisite halls house paintings, weapons and elephant chairs. Huge silver urns were used to carry water from the Ganges to England because the Maharajah didn't trust the English water. They are in the Guiness Book as the largest silver items in the world.

The next morning we hired Mohammed the rickshaw wallah to drive us for the day. We began with a trip out to the Amber Fort. The Fort/Palace is set up on a hillside frramed by the red desert. A recently dried up lake lies at its base. On the path up to the fort we were escorted by brightly decorated elephants. The fort is a labrynth of somewhat crumbling secret passageways connecting beautiful courtyards, small rooms with niches, alcoves and fading frescoes guarded by ornately carved sandalwood doors and, impressive halls decorated with mirrors and stained glass. Beautiful marble floors, collumns and latticework adorn the sandstone structure. Water runs through marble channels set into the floor (early air con) into the central courtyards decorative pond. We spent a few hours exploring the maze and venturing into obscure hidden corners less frequently visited. We spent a few restful moments in a formal garden near by, viewed an ancient palace built in the center of a lake, browsed through some tourist boutiques selling unbelievably beautiful textiles and ended up at the central museum. This musem houses a bizarre, dusty collection of non-related odds and ends crammed behind glass in unlabeled displays.