Jaipur & Agra - Bollywood & Taj the Sequel

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28 Dec - meet my room mate properly this morning, Lesley from San Fran who's about my age and also meet the rest of the group...although it's 5.15am, dark and we're en route to the railway station so struggling to remember all the names. There's 14 of us on this trip, mostly US and Canadian but also 3 Aussies and a Dutch couple.

We take the train to Jaipur, which is pretty much on time...always a bonus for the Indian Railways. Jaipur is a great city, not quite as manic as Delhi or Calcutta and not as smoggy as Agra. It's definitely still typically Indian though with busy roads filled with cycles, motorbikes, rickshaws, tuk-tuks, lorries and buses interspersed with cows, goats, monkeys and dogs everywhere. Jaipur became known as the Pink City (although it's actually more of a terracotta colour!), when it was painted by Maharajah Sawai Ram Singh in 1853 to celebrate the visit of Prince Albert. Bhupindra (Bhup) takes us on an interesting orientation walk of the city and we visit the City Palace in the afternoon. A few pre-dinner drinks (back on the Old Monk Rum and cokes) at the hotel with Bhup then most of the group heads to a stunning converted Maharajah palace / heritage hotel for dinner. It's a lovely meal al fresco in the grounds of the palace with very friendly Rajasthan hospitality and great music and dancing. End up drinking with Bhup until the wee small hours.

29 Dec - miss my wake up call and feel horrendous so give the morning organised activities a miss. The afternoon is free for the group so Bhup takes me on a quick visit to the impressive Amber Fort. Then head back to the hotel to meet up with a few of the others to go the cinema!

Jaipur is home to the Raj Mandir, a spectacular art deco / meringue type filmhouse. We're going to see THE Bollywood film of the moment - Rab ne Bana de Jodi, produced by Aditya Chopra and starring the famous (and extremely cute!) actor Shahrukh Khan. I've seen trailers for this film and so many videos from the film on MTV that I'm very excited to be seeing this specific film and in such grand & famous surroundings. As I had read, it's a noisy, excitable experience going to the cinema with Indians. There must have been hundreds of people in the packed auditorium with much to-ing and fro-ing throughout the film, children screaming, mobiles going off, people speaking on their mobiles and everyone cheering, laughing and clapping during funny parts of the film. There's no subtitles but it's easy to follow the plot - a great chickflick with fantastic singing and dancing. The film lasts about 3 hours, with an interval, the others all leave during the interval but Bhup and I stay...until the happy ending. I can't wait to get the film on DVD with subtitles, for the bits I couldn't understand as well as buying the superb soundtrack. I'm now completely addicted to the Bollywood scene - it's so vibrant, catchy and colourful. Bhup and I head to a local Thali restaurant for dinner.

30 Dec - another train journey today. Quite uncomfortable though as we're in the sleeper carriage...sitting like sardines on the bunks. We arrive in Agra by lunchtime and take rickshaws to our hotel. Staying in the same area as the last trip but different hotel, all looks very familiar. We visit the Red Fort first this time and then the Taj Mahal just before sunset. It still looks spectacular although I'm sad not to be sharing it with Liam this time. It's much busier than my last visit, prob because it's holiday season, with colourfully dressed Indians everywhere...all very keen to take photos of the white, Westerners!!!

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Photos

Dusk at the Taj Mahal
A mystical experience

Cute wee tuktuk
A great way to get round Agra