Today was another wonderful day, although I have to admit it was a bit of a blur! We had a relatively early start to the day again, but after a solid night’s sleep, it wasn’t too painful. We had another tasty buffet breakfast (thought not as good as the one in Agra which was seriously top notch!), complete with sweet Indian tea. Indian tea is something I’m definitely going to miss when I’m back in Canada – I’m definitely going to have to learn how to make it. I bought all kinds of interesting black teas to bring back, so now I just have to learn the right ratio of ginger and spices to add (not to mention milk and sugar).
Lal picked us up promptly at 8am, and we headed into the old part of the city to meet our tour guide for the day. Our first stop was at the Hawa Mahal, or palace of winds, although we didn’t actually get to go inside. The old city of Jaipur is really interesting – there is a bylaw (don’t know if it’s the right word, but same type of deal) that says that all of the buildings that are built there have to be pink (Jaipur is known as the pink city). This stems back hundreds of years, when the King decided to paint the city pink as a welcome for the visiting Prince of Wales (pink is the colour of welcome). We only made a brief stop to take photos of Hawa Mahal (and meet up with the tour guide) and then we were off to Amber.
Amber is a city that is over 1000 years old, and sits on a hill about 12 km away from Jaipur. The Amber Fort, which was our main reason for visiting Amber, sits 54 meters up the side of this hill, and is an imposing, but beautiful, yellow structure. It was built by Raja Man Singh, the Commander in Chief of Akbar’s army, in 1592, although it was not completed until later, by his descendant Jai Singh. To get up to the fort you have a choice of taking the stairs or taking an elephant ride –we of course, chose the elephant ride! Our elephant was huge and adorable. She happened to be the slowest of the bunch though – we were passed by at least 7 other elephants on our way up to the Fort. It was a really neat experience, riding up the hill to the Fort – looking behind you, you see a whole line of other elephants trekking up as well. Very cool! I did feel kind of guilty about the ride. I didn’t want to contribute to the elephants being kept in poor conditions, or being treated badly. We were assured that each elephant only makes 5 trips up the hill per day (and only 2 per day in the summer) but I still feel kind of bad. Our elephant driver kept trying to encourage our elephant to go faster by whacking him with a stick, and I didn’t like that too much.
The Fort itself is really beautiful inside. The elephants take you directly into the large main courtyard. From there we went to see the “hall of public audience” or Diwan-i-Am. We then entered the palace area through Ganesh Pole, a beautifully painted (and still fully original – no restoration done!) gate. My favourite part of the palace area was the Sheesh Mahal. The Sheesh Mahal was the private chambers of the Maharaja and his queen and are decorated fully with glittering mirrors, arranged in mosaics. We tried to take photos, but the photos can’t fully capture its beauty. I can only imagine what it looked like at night when the Maharaja would light oil candles so that the candle-light would reflect off of the thousands of mirrors inlaid in the walls and ceilings. It must have been incredible!
On our way out of the Amber fort we saw a real snake charmer! It was crazy cool (and kind of creepy!). He had a real (small) cobra in a basket, and was playing music on a flute, while another man played the drums.
After visiting the Amber fort we made a quick stop to take photos of the Water Palace – a palace built directly into a man-made lake. Apparently the lake totally dries up in the summer, but is full of water right now. I’m pretty sure that you can only reach the palace by boat at the moment!
Our next stop was Jantar Mantar, a large astronomical observatory constructed in the 1700s at the request of Jai Singh. The observatory was really cool – it’s basically full of large sundials that tell not only the time, but also astrological signs . The Jantar Mantar is actually home to the world’s largest sundial – a huge structure (seriously, its as tall as small house) that is accurate to 2 seconds! Can you imagine? That’s almost as accurate as my watch!
After visiting the Jantar Mantar, our tour guide wanted to show us some of the handiwork that Jaipur is famous for. We probably should have been wary when he said that (a lot of these guys work on some degree of commission) but we thought it might be neat to see. We started off with block printing. The place we went had a little demonstration area, where we got to actually try our hand at making a block printed elephant! It was neat! The downside, was afterwards the guy that had demonstrated the block printing took us into his store. It was pretty high pressure – he wanted to show us all of the expensive stuff he had. Priyanka ended up buying some fabric for her friend who is a seamstress, but I thankfully was able to avoid buying anything. Next, the guide wanted to take us to a place that did gemstone cutting and polishing. We politely watched the demonstration, but having learned from the last shop, declined going into the store. We both knew that we wouldn’t be able to afford any gemstones, and didn’t want to get roped into anything.
At this point it was time to say goodbye to our tour guide and head to Delhi! I have to say, although this tour guide was quite good, and very knowledgeable, my favourite that we’ve had so far, has still been Amit. He really set the bar high!
Our drive to Delhi took around 5 hours, and we settled into our hotel at about 6:30. The hotel is nothing too exciting. I think our first hotel (which we had upgraded to a four star) really set our expectations high, so nothing can really measure up to that at this point. Our first room didn’t smell very nice, so we got them to move us to another room which is much cleaner. We ended up meeting up with Priyanka’s cousin and her husband (who funny enough live literally around the corner from our hotel!), and went for dinner at a yummy vegetarian Indian fast food place! The meal was really good – after I finished eating my food, Priyanka’s cousin said to me that if I could taste her food, and not have steam coming out of my ears, that I was a true honorary Indian. I tasted it (it was a mushroom and corn dish) and lo and behold, didn’t actually find it that spicy! It actually seemed rather sweet! I’ve always enjoyed spicy food, but I think my spice tolerance has definitely increased on this trip!
Now we’re back in our hotel, and settling in again for the evening. I’m pretty tired after our long and exciting day! Tomorrow should be another busy but nice day – I think we’re getting a city tour of Delhi, and hopefully going to have a chance to shop in some of the government emporiums. I can’t believe that tomorrow is my last day in India! I’m looking forward to coming home (and really excited for Christmas) but it is definitely bitter sweet. What a life changing experience this all has been!
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