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The next day we headed to the Pink City. Upon arrival we were informed by Mr Singh that our 2.5 hour elephant ride the next day was actually a ten minute ride up to Amber Fort. Andrew and I went livid and demanded we speak to the tour agency. After much argument, he said that there had been a misunderstanding and that he would pay for us to have dinner at one of the old Havellis in town. We lazed the afternoon by calling the Wilsons, and then donned our glad rags for dinner.
The roof top restaurant was better laid out than most places we had eaten at but in terms of menu and price was almost the same as the one in our hotel. From the look of the photos on the wall it seems Prince Charles clearly got conned by a tour agency too, as he also stayed at the hotel. We sat down for a couple of Kingfishers and some Thali when an Australian across the way from us peered over the roof to announce that there was a man using a pool cleaning net to catch bats with downstairs.
Thus began the rest of
our hillarious night. Victoria was celebrating her 40
th Birthday and before long we had been invited to join her and her friend Kaye for a drink. First however, the restaurant wanted us to watch a puppet show. The puppets had been designed so that by carefully pulling the strings, the puppets did some crazy Bollywood dancing. The weirdest moment being the Maharaja puppet and the dance he did on his horse. Rather bizarre but good fun. I brought a puppet at thr end of the show which does weird out Andrew – it is a reversible puppet where if you flip the skirt it changes from a man to a woman. Seemed silly enough to hang in the bathroom anyway!
Kaye and Victoria were from Alexandra near Melbourne and worked for the Rangers of the National Park. We have been invited to stay with them in Kaye's country lodge with the offer of a guided walk round the outback and the loan of a tent if we fancied some wild camping. Any offer of free accommodation and entertainment has always appealed to us so looks like we will be heading to Alexandra!
The next day we went into
Jaipur to see the sights of the third point of the so-called “Golden Triangle.” First stop was the Hawa Mahal also known by the name I'm sure my Father would prefer “Palace of Winds.” This beautiful, if gutted, building was made so that the women of the palace could watch the street processions below without being seen, This has meant there are some elaborate and beautiful stone carved screens which enable you to see out and no-on to see in. Traditionally, married women under Indian Islamic law were kept in Purdah or under veil with their faces being kept out of sight, and most often indoors, upon their marriage by their husbands. Sadly, this tradition still occurs in many of the villages even if change is finally occurring in cities.
we next visited Jaigargh Fort. This being worth a mention as the site of the largest wheeled cannon in the world. The cannon has a range of 40 km and requires 100 kg of gunpowder to fire it. It has however only been fired once as a test, and stands protected by army guards keen to make a few rupiah by taking your picture.
After a short drive
we next arrived at Amber Palace. Our long awaited elephant ride took us up the steep hill to the fort. We befriended a pair from France who were getting fed up of people trying to sell you something every ten yards and we took their photo aboard the elephant and they took ours as a way to bypass the photograph sales at the end. Cunning plan. The elephant scheme is a government run program with the rule of strictly no tipping of elephant drivers but with this information only being given to us at the end of the trip after we had been asked for “elephant man tip?” We gave him the customary 10 rupees upon which he said “No 100 rupees.” We at this point could see the no tipping sign and told him politely that that was all his was getting. The palace itself was apart from its beautiful location above the city of Jaipur, rather lacking of interesting things to see and didn't compare well with the palaces in Bikner and Pushkar. The views were lovely and the parts of the audio guide that were labelled and we were able to locate were interesting, but again it
seemed a half-finished venture. The most interesting historical point being that the Divan-i-Am or Hall of Public Audiences where the Maharaja used to hold court, was hidden from view of the invading Muslim armies using large curtains and screens. The Mughal army commander saw the very basic cloth and decided that the palace was not worth conquering and turned around. The Divan-i-Am at Amber is therefore one of the best preserved of its time having been hidden under cloth for so long.
After a long climb down to the car, we headed over to Jaipur City Palace. This had much more to see than Amber with the beautiful hall of public audience still being used by the current Maharaja. There was also a textile gallery (neither of us being that bothered with) and the much more interesting armoury with all the various weapons used by the Rajphuts and the most threatening Welcome sign I have ever seen made of various weapons. After a barter in the market, we headed back to the hotel to recover from the heat.
The drive back to Delhi was a tortuous drive through the worst traffic jam I have ever seen being caused
by a terrible accident involving two lorries. My need to visit the lavatory on a fairly frequent basis meant a couple of rather grim stops at highway stations but we eventually pulled over for some coke and crisps at around 12 o'clock. We checked into the Eurostar International Hotel which was a ten minute drive from the airport for our flight the next day. The owner was an Indian who now lived in London who had realised the area's potential for the hotel business and had set up several hotels in the area. The hotel was fantastically clean by Indian standards and we were able to lounge away our final afternoon eating pizza and watching tv like true slobs who hadn't had a day of doing nothing in a while.
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