The Pink City

The Monkey Temple
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Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan and the home of 3.2 million people – it is also known as the Pink City. Before we made it to the city we first visited a temple called Galta & Surya Mandir, or now commonly called The Monkey Temple.

Monkey Temple from the top
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The place is great – an elegant deserted town/city now the home of many monkeys just hanging out and swimming in the pools – people too, swimming in the pools with the monkeys.

We left and drove to our hotel – we’d paid a little extra and treated ourselves to a luxury hotel for our final two nights – but sadly the guy in the tourist office pulled a fast one, charged us for it but put us in a basic hotel thinking by the time we got back to Delhi our train out would be about to leave so we wouldn’t be able to challenge him.

Swimming monkeys
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The hotel was actually fine, it had air-con and a roof terrace, the beer was cheap and the food good and so the next day we visited The City Palace which is home to the Maharaja, the King of Rajasthan. The old city is divided in to a grid system where trades specialize in certain districts and all of the buildings are painted pink – hence the name The Pink City.

Amber Fort
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We also visited two forts, The Amber Fort and the Tiger fort. The Amber Fort holds a huge gun that has been used jus once and is said to have fired its cannon a huge 22 miles – a slight exaggeration me thinks – no wonder they only fired it once.

On Saturday we drove back to Delhi in time to have a quiet word with our tourist chap – and in an attempt for us all to save face we agreed that silly mistakes could be made and we walked out happy with a 25% refund.

City Palace
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So with a bit of cash in our pocket our driver then drove us to the Broadway hotel in Old Delhi, we parked ourselves in the bar and treated ourselves to a meal before out long journey to Kanda on the night train. A great end to a great week – the first of our year away.