Blogs from Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, Asia - page 19

14.00 hours Friday 15 March Ok so the upgrade was a fat mattress. Any upgrade is good. The rooms ok and I sleep as the area is out of town and a bit quiet for India. Manoj the owner of the Snehdeep has given me some really good walking tour maps of the old city and I decide to give it ago. I decide to find my bearing and head out. The Snehdeep is not central by any means but I do try to stay away from the main tourist areas which will mean walking or bus and at the last resort rick it. I go up to the main road back into Jaipur and walk to the edge of The Pink City. I turn into one of the main bazaars From there it’s follow the ... read more

March11 Hey everybody! We’ve been abit naughty & haven’t written for awhile so there’s quite abit to catch up on! As Jonny mentioned, we made some friends in Mumbai (its amazing how well people bond over upset tummies!) & although we knew they would be in Jaipur for Holi is was a nice surprise to see them walk past at the Elephant Festival. So the Holi Festival adventure began with Ellie & Thomas, I would like to mention if I hadn’t put my arm around the tuk tuk driver, I would have fallen off into the road & possibly the excrement of one of the following, cow, dog, pig, goat, monkey, human, camel or horse. And secondly, I don’t think I need to point this out but the male member of the group to wear the ... read more

So we left Mumbai and headed to the next stop which was Jaipur. This was to see our main reason for coming to India the Holi festival. Holi festival is basically a huge party to welcome in spring where everyone chucks coloured paint, drinks bhang lassi and gets drunk. For a lot of indian men who seem to love a good grope of any western girl, I can only imagine this is like Xmas new years and their birthday rolled into one. The day before holi fest is the elephant festival, where loads of elephants, camels and horses are all decorated, possibly against their will and paraded in front of India’s media, a good helping of tourists and a load of Indians keen to party. We got a tuk tuk from our hotel to the event ... read more

Nachdem wir endlich mal ausgeschlafen haben (um 9 Uhr erkundigte sich der Rezeptionist per Telefon besorgt ob wir denn wach wären und zum Frühstück kämen, denn wir hatten uns für 09.30 Uhr angemeldet) und im Garten gefrühstückt haben machen wir uns gegen 12 Uhr auf den Weg nach Jaipur. Unseren ersten Schub Postkarten geben wir im Hotel ab...ob das gut geht oder sich der Junge von dem Portogeld lieber was anderes kauft? Neeein, wir wollen ja nicht so misstrauisch sein...los geht es etwa 140 Kilometer nach Nordwesten, nach Jaipur. Auf dem Weg halten wir noch bei einem Straßenmarkt und kaufen Wasser und ein olivenähnlich aussehendes Obst, das jedoch wie eine Mini-Birne schmeckt. Nach etwa 3 Stunden Fahrt kommen wir in Galta an, einer kleinen Schlucht, die 5 km vor Jaipur liegt und in meinem Reiseführer empfohlen ... read more

Twenty one kilometres down the Jaipur road from Fatehpur Sikri is the Keoladeo Ghana National Park another World Heritage site and a former hunting preserved turned National Park set up in 1982 to protect migrating birds some from as far away as Siberia. We hired a horse and cart at the entrance to take us into the park for around an hour and a half, the cart was drawn by a native Marwari horse which had pointy ears that almost touched above its head. After only a few minutes trotting down the track we saw our first owl and then a Hoopoe. The weather is lovely today and the surroundings are for India extremely peaceful. Soon we were seeing Ringed Parakeets, breeding Painted Storks in their huge tree top nests, Greater Egrets, Chinese Coots, Magpie Robins ... read more