Amber Palace

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January 27, 2007 - Part 2

We headed back to the car after Hawa Mahal to begin our drive out of town to the Amber Palace. It was here I planned to ride the elephant to the top of the hill where the palace was located.

On the approach to the palace, in the thick of traffic, a young man approaches the car and offers his services as a guide for 20 Rupees. He produces this laminated document he claims is his guide license. We decided what the heck… it’s only 20 rupees, which is less than 50 cents. So he jumps in the car, and we tell him we want to ride an elephant to the top. He insists it’s much better to ride the elephant “on the down side.” So he directed our driver where to find a good parking place and off we went to tour the palace.

On the approach to the palace, he does an excellent job of explaining to us that the palace construction began in 1592 by Raja Man Singh and was completed over a century later by his grandson Jai Singh (not sure if it’s the same guy that built Jantar Mantar the astrological park or his father). The palace architecture is a mixture of Hindu and Mughal. The Mughal’s were Muslims from Persia, and they ruled most of the Indian subcontinent in the 1500’s. Raja Man Singh married a Hindu woman and built the palace in both architectural styles to honor her. Notice in the first picture the winding road to reach the palace.

The Amber palace (pronounced without the B) is actually contained within a much larger fort and is walled in by 12 kilometers of stone. It high upon a hill, more for protection than scenic vistas. It is known for its opulence and its Hall of Mirrors. Our guide was doing very well until it came time to actually enter the palace. Comes to find out he’s allegedly only a student tour guide and is not yet allowed inside the palace. He tells us to go inside the palace and have look around for 5 minutes or so and meet him back out front. We protested that we wanted a guide for inside the palace. He assured us we did not need one, but we (more accurately Michele - cuz she’s bolder than I am) insisted. Looking just inside the door he sees his cousin who is fully licensed and convinces the cousin to take us around inside. The cousin turned out to be a fantastic tour guide.

We spent several hours inside the palace, versus our original guide’s recommendation of 5 minutes. I think people say and do anything here to con a Western out of a few rupees. Perhaps they must to eek out a living. Regardless, it really puts you on your guard. And it’s another one of India’s strange dichotomies. On the one hand, hotel staff, co-workers, acquaintances will bend over backward to see that you have what you need/want. They will literally offer you the shirt off their backs if you do so much as mention that you like it. On the other hand, the stranger on the street will lie, cajole, high pressure, divert, and mislead to get your money. I’m learning that India is comprised of a series of opposites. Wealth & poverty. Beauty & filth. Privilege & Denial, Chastity & Sex, Honesty & Swindle.

I enjoyed touring this palace a lot, so I took many pictures. I’ll try to give a feel for what I saw.

It’s up on a hill, but 100’s of years ago, visitors would enter the walls below, near the river. The King’s gardens are down there. I took 2 pictures to give you some idea of how far down they are and how large they are. The pattern in the gardens is classical Mughal style, aka his decorative style.

The palace is divided into 2 sides: his and hers. It was further divided into several floors for the three seasons of India: winter, summer, and monsoon. Top floor = Winter, Middle floor = Monsoon, Bottom Floor = Summer. The King (okay they didn’t call him a king, but whatever) had several open air reception areas. One for the public, another for VIPs, and a third for his women. The picture of the reception area for his women didn’t turn out, but suffice it to say that it was basically of marble courtyard for them to dance in front of him. And yes, when I say women, I mean more than one. He had 12 wives and then a harem to back up the wives. Not that I believe a word of it, but the harem was supposed to be comprised of servants and entertainers that didn’t have the sexual privileges of the wives - though they were supposed to be the most beautiful girls in the region. I’m sure he used a well worn excuse equivalent to, “Relax, honey. We’re just friends,” when one of the harem girls was hanging around too much to suit the wives. (More on the wives in a bit.)

The interesting thing about the VIP reception hall in the next two pictures is the symmetry of the arches. I took both shots from the exact same location: one looking straight on and the other looking diagonally at a 45 degree angle. Notice the pathway of the archways align perfectly regardless of the angle. Likewise, once inside, you could look at a 90 degree angle directly to your right or left and see the exact symmetry.

The next picture is of the entrance way to the King’s half of the house. The doors were very tall and the paintings on the archway were done in vegetable dye and have never been retouched. I can’t imagine how vivid they must have been back in the day. The next doorway picture is the door that used to be to the King’s bedroom. A little worse for the wear, but still pretty. The last picture from the King’s side is a shot out of his bedroom window. It looks up at the fort, specifically where his generals hung out. I guess he wanted to keep his eye on them. Probably wanted them guarding the palace and not drooling over the harem.

Now back to the queens… The queens had their own reception area, but it was just for the King. You see, the queens weren’t allowed to visit inside the King’s side of the palace; he always came to them. I wonder if that was to reduce the risk of the queens running into a harem girl or two or three. This photo is from the queen’s reception. It looks like stained glass, but is translucent stones, marble and a little glass. Again the paintings are vegetable dye.

The next photo is of me in the queen’s gardens. Although the photo doesn’t show it, the shapes in their garden was of Hindu style… aka her decorating style. They also had fountains and pools and whatnot.

The next series of pictures if from another of their reception halls, and to me it was the most impressive part of the palace. It is called the Hall of Mirrors. It is decorated with marble carvings and paintings and tiny little mirrors. It shimmers brilliantly when the light hits it. In the first photo, I wanted to give you sense of how large the hall was and that it was covered head to toe (or walls to ceiling) in the mirrored carvings. The next one shows the mirrors plus a carving with semi-precious stones that appears to have light shining through it, but in fact does not. The last one is a close up shot of one of the mirrored carvings. Some of the missing pieces are due to old age, and some of them are due to tourists picking them off. It’s strange but they don’t keep the public at a distance and there didn’t appear to be anyone monitoring or protecting the place from vandalism.

The next picture is of the door to Queen #1’s bedroom. It was the first in the series of three doors to get to her bedroom. Not sure if the King wanted to be sure no one got in but him, or if she was doing her best to make his harem lovin’ butt had to work to see her. Queen #1’s doorway was on one side of the Hall of Mirrors and Queen #2’s doorway was on the opposite side. They were almost identical except for the fact the #2’s door was smaller. I guess that was to make sure she knew she was second fiddle. The remaining wives all had rooms in a less decorative area away from the Hall of Mirrors.

Although we couldn’t enter her bedroom chambers, our guide told us the interior of her bedroom was also covered floor to ceiling in mirrors. There were no bedroom windows so no external light that could reach the bedroom chamber - privacy issue. So oil lamps were used. The flames would flicker in the mirrors and make the ceiling glitter like a million stars.

The next picture, that looks like a square hole in the ground, is a square hole in the ground. But it’s also Queen #1’s bathtub. Notice is has a little seat in it that looks like a shower seat. It would’ve been nice if she could’ve had a Jacuzzi style reclining seat. I’m not sure how they filled it up or drained it, but she’s the only woman in the palace with her own tub. It was good to be Queen #1! Another interesting point about this photograph is that if you look closing on the floor of the tub under the tub seat, there's a small pile of trash. They litter indiscriminately here... even in historical monuments.

The next picture is of the stuff on top of the Hall of Mirrors. I found this interesting from an engineering point of view. The two turret looking portions are in fact, water towers! If you look very closely above the 3 archways in center, you’ll see a pipe. This pipe was fed from water in the towers and it had little holes in it so that it acted like a misting system to help keep them cool in the 115 degree heat! Pretty cool, huh?!

The last picture is of the King’s father’s home. It’s next door to the palace and is where he grew up. The building is 200 years older than the palace. Our guide said people still lived there, but it’s hard for me to imagine. Besides if they are descendants of the King, they should ask to move into the Palace, it’s much nicer digs!

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