Advertisement
Published: December 18th 2005
Edit Blog Post
Painted doorway
At City Palace. Not strictly speaking in chronological order but it looks a lot better than my rickshaw-wallah ... Regrettably I now have a fully fledged sore throat, meaning that's 2 colds in the space of less than a month. I've managed a much lower frequency than that in supposedly cold countries, but I've seen so many other travellers here with the sniffles, that I can only assume the contrast between day (20s) and night (closer to zero) is affecting everyone else too.
However I was pleased to discover that my shower is in perfect working order - it has the correct number of jets, all of which blast out water at an appropriate velocity, and there is unlimited hot water. So a good 30 minutes was spent enjoying this luxury.
I figured I should do the city sightseeing today at a leisurely pace, so I took my first ever cycle rickshaw, to the Hawa Mahal. The cycle rickshaw has to be the most embarrassing form of transport for both parties. For the driver, it's difficult to think of anything more demeaning, short of a piggyback. And especially when the driver is a skinny Indian guy and the passenger a not-so-skinny Englishman. For the passenger, there are whatever colonial overtones you care to mention about the process of
The Hawa Mahal
From the front being transported by someone else's muscle power, plus having the driver's bum bobbing in front of your face when either pulling away from rest, or heading up an incline.
The Hawa Mahal (aka the Palace of the Winds) is a building originally designed to enable the ladies of the court to watch street processions while remaining in a strict state of purdah. It's built in a slim, pyramidal shape, said to resemble a headdress, and has hundreds of vantage points from which to observe the street below while remaining hidden.
The Hawa Mahal sits inside the old city, whose stone colour gives Jaipur its nickname of "the Pink City". The colour looked surprisingly fresh, which I thought gave it something of a fake appearance. Close to the Hawa Mahal, though I got lost finding it, is Jantar Mantar, an astronomical observatory very similar to the one in New Delhi, but with more instruments and in better condition. It was also constructed by Jai Singh.
After Jantar Mantar, I progressed to the City Palace. I didn't really pay much attention to the exhibits there, as I feel I've seen plenty of textiles, puppets, and miniature paintings recently, but
the buildings themselves were interesting, mainly because of their painting - both the large-scale colours, as well as the more decorative patterns on some of the gates. In one courtyard, there was a large marble open-sided building housing two enormous silver urns, which the Maharajah had used to transport Ganges water to the UK in the early 1900s, as he wasn't sure he'd find suitably hygienic water in London on his visit there.
I had lunch in the Palace Cafe, a shameless tourist trap that I would have avoided if I hadn't been feeling so grim (though in its defence the food wasn't bad, though a tad expensive). I had to endure a liveried musician and a dancing boy shuffling around in front of me in a desultory fashion for a few minutes, at the end of which the boy gave me a cheeky wink. Though I dislike being a captive audience, I gave them a tip just to make them go away.
After lunch, I decided I'd done enough for the day, so I headed home through the markets, which was a good decision as I didn't get any hassle. I popped into the Post Office, and
Diwan-i-Khas
At City Palace was immediately summoned to an empty counter. Stamps from here to anywhere in the world are only Rs 8 for postcards, though you do have to buy your own glue to make them actually stick to the postcard.
I slept for the rest of the afternoon, then ate in the hotel restaurant as I didn't have the energy to face the outside world.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.066s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0222s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Diksha
non-member comment
humour
wondeful sense of humour, when you said "more pink" under the pic of them monkey I wondered where??