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Published: June 18th 2015
Day Eleven....
The next day (waking up to see that the squirrel from last nigh was in fact, a bunch of plastic flowers...lol) we were free to do as we pleased, Danielle relaxed by the pool, Rhys kept on the computer and Craig and me had a go slow morning and headed to Pushkar to look at the Brahma temple. We met with everyone for lunch then had a stroll round the ghats, where we thought we had lost Rhys to a cult when he was cornered by a priest and ended up reciting prayers with him. Luckily we weren't too far away before things got too cosmic. We walked around the ghat and went to a spot where you could watch the sunset, but they didn't sell beer. Hmmmm..what to do. After a nice juice we headed back to our hotel, and after some under the counters sells, we had some beers and preceded to play president.... This time, for me there was no winning streak.
Day Twelve......
We were in the car for a few hours today and thanks to Danielle's new downloads we could take it in turns to watch the final episodes of Breaking
Bad. This made for an intense car journey! Ashok took us to a great local and cheap eatery for lunch. This consisted of potato cake with sweet lentil curry and a lassi (regular) out of a clay cup. This was delicious. From here we got to our hotel for the night and Ashok dropped us off just outside the Jaipur walls so we could see the Jantar Mantar observatory and city palace. Ive seen the observatory before and had been raving about it to everyone, luckily they liked it (so they said), it was built between 1727 to 1724. I find the place so interesting and so fascinating to look at. There are a curious collection of sculptures, each structure at the intriguing Jantar Mantar observatory has a specialized astronomical function. There are 14 structures in total, which measure time, predict eclipses, and track stars. The most impressive one is the huge Samrat Yantra sundial. At a height of 90 feet (27 meters), it has a shadow that moves roughly the width of a person's hand every minute.
The city palace was owned by one of the richest families in India, and it is sprawling and beautiful. From here
Tired travellers
Jaipur city palacewe took a horse drawn cart to the Hawa Mahal which was constructed in 1799. Legend has it that the palace, which overlooks the main street of Jaipur's lively Old City, was built so that the women of the royal household could watch the streets below without being observed. This was beautiful and I really enjoyed the intricate and dainty architecture as well as the many shades of colours. Highly recommend. Ashok had suggested we go to see a Bollywood film at the famous Raj Mandir cinema so we took him up on this and took a cycle rickshaw to the cinema. En route one car driver got annoyed with our rickshaw driver and decided to ram the back of him whilst us in it, luckily again, we were ok, we felt sorry for the driver who was going to have to pay out for the damages. We had a very western dinner of Mc Donald's (chicken as they don't have meat ones in India) and bought our ticket for the cinema. From what we have learnt of India we decided to pay for the most expensive seats (which cost about (3 pound) rather than be in the mosh pit
below. The seats were great, but we would have survived down below no problems. The Bollywood blockbuster we watched was called Terra Hero and it was entertaining. It's funny as half of it is in Hindi and the rest is in English, so for example, something would happen and they would shout 'oh my god' or 'whatever'. I lost the plot about half way in, somehow the main character was transported from India to a mafia boss house in Bangkok trying to get together with a girl. There was dancing, and singing and it really was like a pantomime, the crowd below would whoop and cheer and whistle when the characters fought, or kissed. It did get quite rowdy below and at one point there was a fight! After this was broken up and people ejected everyone carried on with the film, some people must have been having to much fun and getting too excited!
Day Thirteen.....
The next morning we were up early as we had a packed full day of sightseeing. Our first stop was to Chand Baori, which is a very old landmark in Rajasthan. It was built by King Chanda of the Nikumbha Dynasty
between 800 and 900 AD and was dedicated to Hashat Mada Goddess of Joy and Happiness upon completion. It was also used in Batman The Dark Knight Rises. It is a HUGE well. The state of Rajasthan is extremely arid, and the design and final structure of Chand Baori was intended to conserve as much water as possible. At the bottom of the well, the air remains 5-6 degrees cooler than at the surface, and Chand Baori was used as a community gathering place for locals during periods of intense heat.
We stopped briefly for some pictures in front of the Jal Mahul (water palace), which is the palace on the lake.
Our next stop was the Galter monkey temple, this is a ruinous but holy Hindi temple, nestled in peaceful surroundings between two granite cliffs, it is quite an adventure walking up to the temple which is built around the mountains. The temple is part of a larger temple complex, which also has three sacred pools of water. One of the pools has been taken over by thousands of monkeys that congregate there to swim and bathe. They're generally friendly and love to be fed, which we
Batman well
Chand Baori found out, Craig was passing them nuts to eat which they loved. I didn't stick around too long, didn't want any nuts thrown over my head so the monkeys would come get me! The legend says that the three sacred pools are varying depths said to be two or three elephants high deep.
Next stop was Amber Fort which is set on a hill top overlooking Maota Lake. It was the original home of Rajput royalty until Jaipur city was constructed, and contains a number of breathtaking palaces, halls, gardens, and temples. Inside, the elaborate mirror work adds to the grandeur. It was very pretty, however the whole time, convinced that more from the Dark Knight Rises from Batman well was here (the outside shot), and spent my time with tunnel vision looking for it.
We were all pretty tired, it's a full blown two weeks for sure and when we arrived in a town just outside of Agra, we had some food and headed straight to bed. The hotel was very cheap and I think had India's dirtiest bath/bathroom for sure. We stopped here as we wanted a dose of nature and there is a huge bird
sanctuary here to go see tomorrow.
Day Fourteen....
We got an early night and woke to have breakfast at 6am before going to the sanctuary down the road. Danielle wasn't feeling too well so the three of us plodded on without her. After much confusion over the price of the bird sanctuary, ie they were trying to fleece us, we had one guide (they thought we would need two) and one bike each (they wanted us to hire a rickshaw as well) we were off. I actually quite like a bit of twitching from now and then and despite most of the birds having migrated for the winter there was plenty to see. It must be amazing when all the birds are around, we still saw a decent amount and the guide kept us entertained pointing out different birds and telling us about a book he has coming out with the national geographic. Not sure how true this was. One great suggestion he had was to go and visit Baba, the local guru guy who lives on the grounds and as we were to learn was the dr.dolittle of the Indian world. This was surreal. Baba lives at
the temple which is by a lake. We said hi and next thing we knew he was showing us his pictures of him with various animals such as, monkeys, deer and turtles (I'll get back to that in a second). He claimed he had been in magazines but when he showed us he had stuck his pictures onto magazines spread which wa sad little strange, but we went with it giving full enthusiasm. So coming back to these turtles, Baba said if we wanted we could watch him feed the turtles which live in the lake. Yes please, sounds fun. Baba made some dough like concoction and we moved to where you can enter the lake. He then started making noises and splashing at the water and then behold, giant turtles started coming for the food, there must have been at least 10-15 some of them were huge! They were getting very excited and making lots of splashing. A monkey came for a look as well, and beared his teeth at Craig for some reason (monkey complex) which was funny and all in all the experience was surreal. Afterwards as an end scene id say, Baba gave us his business
card and told us how to find him on Facebook! Bear in mind, this guy lives where there is no electricity or running water and looked like he needed to eat a couple of pies, how did he afford electricity let alone a computer, and internet for that matter!, who knows what's going on there. After some more cycling around and looking at birds it was 10am and time to head back. We met with Danielle and jumped in the car to Agra.
We were quite tired understandably so once we arrived in Agra but we had one last fort to see (they were moulding into one at this point) -Agra fort. It was beautiful and there was a great viewpoint of the two mahul which gave us our first glimpse of this wonder. After here Ashok took us to another viewpoint of Beene taj mahul which was across the river to watch the sunset. This was great, for me I haven't seen the Taj Mahul from this side and to be honest I think it is my favourite view with the river in front of it, it looks very imposing and when the sun sets it makes it
Snake charmer
They appeared to have a love/hate relationship seeing as the snake repeatedly tried to 'get' the charmer with his non existent fangs - beef... have a pinky tinge which I loved. On the way back ashok took us through a very poor area and where part of the slumdog millionaire film was filmed- if you know it, it is the part when there is a taxi tour and the young boy is 'looking after' the car, when the tour group comes back the car is minus wheels. Ashok thought this was hilarious and was laughing to himself about that scene and how it relates to him for a while.
We were cream cracked after this so relaxed and had a delicious Indian thali meal, followed by an early night. Thali is a selection of various dishes and it great if you want to try different things. You can have a veggie one or meat, and they tend to come with pickle, dahl, rice, roti, curd, some salad and even a little pudding. Its like an all you eat meal, which is always about 1pound in cost.
Day Fifteen....
Today was the last day and we were up early to watch the sunrise over the Taj Mahul. We were up super early and walked like zombies down to the entrance. After a
Baba and his turtles
Whatever Dr.Indian dolittle says, the monkey is trouble bit of a mix up with us not being allowed to take a tripod in, and having to walk about 500metre to where we could safely leave it before entering we were in. An English girl was trying to get in, dressed in a sari and with Indian friends for the Indian rate, no such luck lm afraid. It did make us laugh. You will probably already know a lot about the Tag Mahal so ill just let you look at the pictures. If you don't, a brief synopsis, it is a mausoleum which the Mughal emperor made in memory of his third wife who died. It is considered one of the wonders of the new world.
We did catch the sunrise (kind of) and felt like we had the place to ourselves before the bus loads of tourists came round. It was beautiful, and we spent our time listening to the audio guide and getting a feel for the place. We had to take our shoes off to enter the main mausoleum and were amused by the security guard heavily draped in weapons who was manning the shoe store - must have been previous alterations over whose shoes
were whose!
We headed back to the hustle and bustle of Delhi, en route we stopped in the middle of the motor way so Ashok could take pictures of us on the road and how safe and modern it was. It is safe and modern, but l don't think standing in the middle of it was a particularly safe thing to do...this really is Indian psyche. We were dropped off, said goodbye to Ashok and the same with Raj and bid fellwell.
Rhys wasnt feeling too well but Craig and me went out for a drink, my first g&T in a month or so!
We enjoyed the taxi trip a lot, we had built it up a lot and despite a couple of bumps in the road (pun INTENDED!) we got there. Shame it couldn't have started as it finished. Great time sharing the experience with friends and a safe, comfortable way to see Rajasthan, recommend!
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