The rose city

Guard lounging in the city palace

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To complete the "golden triangle" of Indian tourism, we visited Jaipur. Jaipur is known as the rose city since they painted the whole city pink in the 1800's for a visit from the Prince of Wales. Since then it's been law to maintain the colour throughout the walled old city.

The old city is laid out quite nicely, with broad straight streets lined with bazaars and classic Indian architecture.  That said it is an  Indian city of 2 million, which means the usual traffic chaos, noise, congestion and open sewers. In fact the touts in Jaipur seemed to be the most aggressive we've encountered yet. Shopkeepers would literally throw shawls over Katherine's head in a marketing attempt. We both had to get physical to keep people out of our space. And even when we'd pass 30 rickshaws in row and refuse them all, the next one would look on and then hope that we'd finally change our mind and hitch a ride. Katherine had just had her first experience with Delhi belly, and Paul was coming off a bad cold, so neither of us were really in a mood to deal with people for whom no meant yes.

The elephants of Amber fort, all dressed up

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That said, Jaipur has some great sites. The city palace is full of luxurious suites and marble carvings reflecting the power of Jaipur's former maharajas (maharajas are equivalent to European kings). One of the maharajas was a keen astronomer and his 18th century observatory was full of massive instruments which calibrated planetary motions, had massive sundials and even used the sun for astrological purposes! (we didn't understand how the astrological stuff worked) Also, there were several other fantastic buildings throughout the city, such as the 5 story Palace of the Winds, built for the maharajas many wives and the lake palace, built on an artificial island in the middle of a lake. Also, there's a great 17th century fort (fort = castle in India) just north of the city. We also really enjoyed getting away from the touristy bazaars and into the back streets of Jaipur, where you'd find artisans carvings works of art from stone and local women shopping for bangles and saris. Really looking around India you realize how huge of an industry has disappeared in the west, as millions of people here spend their days sewing, carving and producing everyday works of art. Not many people know or practice these trades back home anymore.

Spices in the bazaar

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So while Jaipur had its nice sides, the constant hassles in most parts of the city made it an exhausting place to visit.