Jolly Jaipur

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Our arrival was at 11:00am after getting up at 4am to catch the train to Jaipur from Delhi. The train was awesome, and only took 4 hours. They served us a meal and brought us tea two times in 4 hours. Plus we had loads of leg room. I still believe trains are the best way to travel. After fending off a number of rickshaw wallahs and autorickshaw wallahs, beggars, children, sales people, their relatives and friends, we were still stuck with one guy that walked with us for more than half a block. Nabil and I thought this was hilarious at first, but we quickly started getting annoyed. He wouldn't leave, even though we were getting progressively more pissed off and agressive towards him. Also, we were getting hopelessly lost. Jaipur is a confusing city in the best of circumstances. We were hoping that with a rudimentary memory of the city from looking at the map for 5 seconds that we would be able to walk our way to the hotel we had picked out. Turns out, it didnt work. Nabil and I began to converse in French, hoping that he wouldnt be able to understand anything we were saying. The gist of our discussions was how to get rid of him, not a simple task. We thought we had escaped him, he was tagging behind by a couple of blocks, then who should arrive in his autorickshaw. We were both fuming mad at this point. He broke out some sob story about how nobody rode in his rickshaws in the last month. Waah Waah Waah. There was no way he was getting even a penny of our money. We had briefly considered getting a ride with him, just to get him to leave us alone. Ironically, he spoke better English than anyone else we have met on this trip. We disposed of him by getting his phone number and telling him we would call him if we needed a ride, with absolutely no intention of actually calling unless it was an emergency.

Our hotel, Hotel Pearl Palace, was very very nice. A nice price too- only 300 Rupees for a double room. We didn't have our own bathroom, but we never saw anyone else in the shared bathroom. We had an aircooler which works on evaporation of water to cool rooms, and it worked wonders in the very dry climate in Jaipur.

Jaipur is a very nice city. It is very pink - though I think its kind of more brownish pink - see for yourself - I'm color-weak. Its famous monuments the Hawa Mahal and the Palace were both very beautiful, and we enjoyed them immensely. The Hawa Mahal was very confusingly laid out, and we found out that it was because the Maharajah needed a way to visit his 12 wives secretly during the night when we visited the Ahmer Fort the following day.

The evening of our first night in Jaipur we visited the Monkey temple. I was very nervous about this because I built it up a lot to Nabil as this really cool place, and I was worried that there wouldn't be any monkies and I would look like an idiot. In the end it exceeded my wildest expectations. We were dropped off by our rickshaw driver at the foot of the hill and we had to climb up. On the way we saw more monkies than you could believe. At one point, we saw cows, goats, pigs, dogs, and monkies all in the same vicinity. There were a great number of mother monkies with their young. It was really fun walking around there and we saw a lot of monkies doing funny things. I saw a very mischevious cow (hadnt known they existed) which was stealing grass from a farmer while his back was turned. I had to laugh, but I dont think the guy thought it was funny.

We did a whole lot of shopping while in Jaipur. I bought myself a tiger-eye necklace and a wall hanging. Nabil bought a whole lot of things for friends and relatives. There are a lot of local artisans making really stunningly beautiful pieces. One of the things that I enjoyed the most in Jaipur was visiting a gem shop where they polished their own stones. It was fascinating to watch them turn a roughly-hewn stone into a beautiful work of art.

The first night we ate at the revolving restaurant in Jaipur. As the name implies it is a resaurant on the 14th floor of a tower which rotates once every hour. Great views from there!

A long time ago they built a huge observatory in Jaipur, and we got to wander around it. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and gave a very interesting tour.

Climatically, Jaipur is very hot. You dont really notice it too much except for the sweat pouring off your brow when the sun peeks out from behind the clouds. It is very dry, its in a desert after all - and the aircoolers do a great job of keeping things cool. Forecasts of temperature-induced misery were overblown, but the high heat does sap your energy a bit and require a higher level of water intake.

All is well in Agra, and we depart for the Taj Mahal and other sights soon

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Comments

[sally]

great
Ian, You are seeing such wonderful things. Your photographs are stupendous. Is Nabil having a good time? Love you so much. Mom

[Sara Lepori]

so - you are on my home turf! gosh, i feel like i recognize everywhere you went.... AND you went to the monkey temple!!! amazing!