Jaipur City Tour
One of the amazing things that I’ve come to learn about India, is that pretty much everyone has a brother/cousin/good friend in every city and in whatever line of work may be relevant at the time. Need a taxi? Your tuk-tuk driver will have a brother with a car. Looking for carpets (as you know we are)? Your car driver’s cousin just happens to have a shop “not far away – good prices”. It’s six degrees of Kevin Bacon family style, and manifests itself today in a cabbie sent to us by his brother (who is also a driver, but busy this morning), who was referred by his “very good friend” – the driver in Udaipur – that we were introduced to by his brother the travel agent.
We’ve hired the car for the day to take us around the city and see the sights. Jaipur is a much bigger city than Udaipur, with traffic and noise much closer to what we experienced in Delhi. It’s a much more pleasant city though, and while we have absolutely no idea where we are going from one stop to the next, we do get to see some pretty interesting things. The catch however, is that even though Diwali is over, school is still out for another week, so combined with the start of tourist season, many places are packed to the rafters.
As with Udaipur, there is a large City Palace here for the former royal family, and another small Lake Palace. Both are very nice, but we’re hitting our palace limit, so take a few pictures, but mostly power tour through.
Next to the City Palace is a huge compound housing the Jantar Mantar, an collection of odd constructions designed to track stars, measure time, predict eclipses, and so on. For astronomy geeks this is probably over the top cool, but we’re simple folk, so a lot of it sails over top of our heads. Nevertheless, it’s still pretty impressive to see something built in the early 1700s that still functions today, accurate to within 2 seconds.
As we tour these sights, we also get a chance to see the streets of the Old City, and the buildings that line them all painted with a uniform pink color (apparently, painting your wall any other color within the walls of the Old City incurs a significant fine). This is a holdover from the late 1800s, when the city was painted to welcome the Prince of Wales. There are a number of markets in this area that we may hit over the next few days, but from the comfort of our car, the place looks beyond chaotic.
Our last stop is Amber Fort, which a few miles out of the main city, up on one of the surrounding hills. It is a massive fort that was started in the 1500s, and expanded several times over the ensuing generations. Unlike most of the palaces which only have small portions open to the public, once inside the gate, access to different areas of the fort is pretty much unrestricted, and I spend the next hour or so wandering down narrow passageways, exploring dark staircases, and peering over the landscape from defensive turrets, all with my cheerful traveling companion close behind. It’s the kind of place that 8 to 12 year old boys (and grown ups that behave like 8 to 12 year old boys) would love, so while I have a great time exploring, I can’t help but wish our little people were with us.
By the time we finish up, the sun is on it’s way down, so the other sights will have to wait until tomorrow.