Jaipur - the Pink City

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Arrived in Jaipur with mum - crazy traffic, hectic and dirty, like Delhi, but somehow with more charm and buzzing with energy. All the buildings are painted dusty pink, hence its name of the Pink City. Its an exciting place but has the highest rate of homeless people in all of India and it's very shocking to see the poverty here. Again - think mum was quite scared! Still can't get over the amount of cows, pigs, monkeys and camels on the streets - camels everywhere on the motorway - so funny!

Our hotel, again, was fantastic - a stunning ex-Maharaja's palace and our suite was decked out in white marble and beautiful carved archways and was enorrrrrmous! Bathroom was nearly the size of my lounge at home!

Annnyways, we went to the grand Amber Fort, which stands high and impressive on a hill just out of the city. We took an elephant ride up there which was fun as mum had never been on an elephant but was so sad to see how badly the mahouts treated the elephants - they beat them with sharp metal spears, was really awful. The fort was really beautiful inside though, and such intricate detail on all the buildings.

Also saw the other main sights, including the Hawa Mahal (Palace of Winds), City Palace, where the current maharaja lives and the surprisingly interesting Observatory - huge structures used to tell the position of the stars, just using the sun relecting on certain areas of the structure, as well as the largest sun dial in the world.

So, after plenty of sightseeing, we managed to find time to hit the exciting bazaars to do some shopping, which Jaipur is famous for, including buying lots of SHOES!

Met up with my friend Heidi (who I was supposed to have seen last week in Varanasi, but couldn't because of my missed flight), who was doing some volunteering in the city. Had her over for a swanky hotel terrace dinner and was really great to catch up. Then got a call from her once she'd gone back - she'd got back to her apartment to find that rats had eaten all her clothes! Poor Heids was pretty freaked out, so got her back to our hotel room to stay the night.

After 2 nights in Jaipur, mum was driven back to Delhi to fly home after a short but sweet visit, and I stayed on with Heidi, as we're planning to travel down to Udaipur together for New Year!

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