Jaipur - Amber and Jaigarh Forts

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A leisurely breakfast at the Nagaur fort. The staff are all on tenterhooks with the VIPs staying. We exchange “good morning” greetings with the Chairman of the BJP as he sets off for his morning meetings outside the fort. He is trailed by four or five of his entourage and five of the mean looking soldiers with flitting eyes and fingers on the triggers of their Uzis. David thinks about asking for a photo of Mr Amit Singh but a look at those guys persuades him otherwise. Probably not a good idea to raise a long barrelled lens at him. This guy is apparently Prime Minister Narendra Modi's chief adviser and they are clearly very nervous about possible assassination, of which of course India has a history from Mahatma Gandhi and Indira Gandhi onwards.

We leave the hotel and drive through a relatively spotless Nagaur town. “Look BJP in town no rubbish anywhere today” points out Pramod. The four hour drive to Jaipur is uneventful as the little changing countryside rolls by. We reach Jaipur and are subsumed in the traffic as we crawl to our hotel. They are building a metro and many picturesque bits of the Pink City are blighted by hoardings and construction work. There is a heatwave in north west India at the moment and the temperature is climbing towards 40C. The poor pedal rickshaw drivers heave their way along the streets, pulling along their sometimes monstrous load of goods and materials, they are the backbone of the city's logistics. The Samode Haveli, our hotel, seems very pleasant. We are on the top floor in our suite with a double balcony.

We check in and set off in the blistering heat to the Jaipur Palace Museum. On our second visit (last one in 2011) we have to say it is distinctly disappointing. The place is stuffed with shops, selling tat as well as decent stuff, but our main grouse is that they have curtailed what you can see, as now you have to pay £25 each to see the really smart bits of the palace, an opportunity we decline. Such a rip off! We see the two courtyards, the costume collection and the arms collection, interesting enough, and the Durbar Hall. Maybe we are spoilt by the amazing palaces we have seen before on this trip and our previous visit here, but we are left distinctly underwhelmed.

We could go and see the Jantar Mantar – the Maharajah's astronomical instruments in the garden – but we are too hot and fed up with being hemmed in by parties of tourists forty strong. It is sad in a way that so many people only see India in this way, buried within a massive party. They have little chance of experiencing what India really means.

Next morning we set off for the Amber Fort. The Kachhawaha dynasty ruled the kingdom of Amber from the 11^th century, and Raja Man Singh started the construction of the present Fort in 1592. Being one of Emperor Akbar's most trusted and loyal allies, Man Singh, already the head of a powerful dynasty, had amassed fabulous wealth from his war booty gained fighting for Akbar. The dynasty moved their capital to Jaipur in 1727 but of course they retained the fort.

Pramod tells us the Fort opens at 9am, and we are there by 9.05. However, there is clearly some scheme whereby massive tour parties can get in earlier as the place is already heaving with more huge groups. We fend off the people offering variously to be our guide, sell us postcards or sell us mock turbans and make our way up to the main courtyard. Once again it is impossible to get a decent photo of anything, as every view is blocked by people with selfie sticks (invariably posing against an utterly nondescript background) or people posing while their guide takes their photo. One fat red faced couple unfurl a large Welsh flag for each of their many photos. So naff, it makes David ashamed of his Welsh heritage. The fort is hugely impressive, but our pleasure is much reduced by this crush of humanity. We eventually leave and go in search of Pramod, who has somehow found space in the massively too small car park. Getting out is a major achievement even by Indian standards, and once more we feel sure the car has a special ‘make me thinner’ button for use in especially tight situations.

From Amber we head to the much less visited Jaigarh Fort, which sits high above the Amber Fort and is connected by tunnels, so that if Amber was ever about to be overrun, the important people could flee to the utterly impregnable Jaigarh. We already have entry tickets as they came free with our City Palace tickets. However, it transpires that we need also to buy tickets for our cameras and for the car. Pramod heads off to buy these as we ponder the lunacy of a ticketing system that lets you drive to and hence block the entrance before telling you that you have to queue to buy another ticket. Eventually we get in, and are glad we can be driven, as its now very hot and a fair distance away. We enter the first courtyard, which is entirely empty and unadorned apart from a pavilion with some old palanquins and machines of a mysterious nature. There are no signs telling you which way to go, and nothing as helpful as a map. We drift through assorted corridors, bumping into the occasional Western tourist looking as bemused as us. Every now and then we find another courtyard, mostly unlabelled. Just as we are wondering why we bothered, we reach the ramparts. The view is stunning. We can look down on the Amber Fort, the various man- made lakes that formed part of the water supply system, and the massive double wall that runs up and down the nearby hills, leaving a serrated silhouette. We eventually find our way back to the entrance, and head to the cannon foundry. Once more the signage leaves a lot to be desired, but we are able to identify the foundry where the iron was melted, and the cannon were cast. One of the main reasons the Mughals under Babur won the battle of Panipat in 1526 by defeating the last Delhi sultan, Ibrahim Lodi, and established their dynasty, was that they had cannon and gunpowder, till then unknown in India. The foundry at Jaigarh was established by Raja Man Singh of Amber, one of Emperor Akbar's greatest generals and most loyal allies. Man Singh learned for himself how to make and cast cannons after he was sent by Akbar to Kabul to put down a revolt there in 1580 and then stayed on for six years as governor. Many of the techniques of cannon making had themselves been taught to the Moghuls by Turkish and Venetian artillerymen.

We see one especially large cannon which required 32 oxen to pull it, but David assures Sara this is not the largest wheeled cannon ever built, which the fort is famed for. Luckily Pramod knows the way, and drives us up to see it. The Jai Van – Victory Cannon - is indeed impressive, but decidedly impractical. Once in place, it once fired a trial shot which travelled 22 miles before obliterating something far further than the designers expected, and seemingly was never used gain.



We retire to the hotel to sit out the worst of the heat in our room, alternating between the shade of our balcony and the cooling AC in the room. At 5.30 we venture out to the bazaar. We fail to find the restaurant we had read good reviews of. We end up in some – even to the hardened Thomases - seriously stinking back streets which feature shit of every possible variety, lots of wee, tons of rubbish and a generally appalling smell. To be honest, even if we’d found the restaurant, we’d have been put off by its surroundings. We beat a retreat and wander through the main bazaars for a while, dodging our way between motorbikes, people, rickshaw wallahs and unpleasant deposits of various plop on the ground. Chai wallahs wander the street each clutching a battered kettle and a stack of tiny cups, selling tea to the stall holders. We give up and go in search of Pramod, who has fortunately not gone far, and head back to the peace and calm of our hotel. In hindsight, it was a bit of a mistake to go back to cities after so long enjoying rural backwaters and little visited sights.

More pictures below.

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Comments

[Keep Smiling]

Jaipur is really lovely - away from the tourists!
It's the capital of Rajasthan with lots for tourists to see, so there's always lots of them too! Amber starts to thin out after the elephants go home at around 11.00a.m. but in my experience it's best in the late afternoon. Alas, the city's backstreets are never going to be clean and tidy - it's India! On my trip to Jaipur this year (blog: Rajasthan (again!) - Jan/Feb 2016), I didn't visit anywhere touristy or, at least, anywhere tourists might go before lunch - Smriti Van, the Old City at daybreak, Chandlai - and what a joy it was!