Jaipur
The penultimate stop on our Indian tour was the city of Jaipur. Although not as far from Ranthembore as Agra, we still had a reasonable long bus trip to get to Jaipur – a chance to get some rest following the early start for the last of our safaris.
We arrived in Jaipur on my birthday, and on the eve of the Holi festival. Since a lot of places were expected to be closed for Holi, at least in the morning when most of the celebrations appear to be held, rather than going to the hotel in Jaipur, we started with a tour of the city and some of the sites. It was a good thing too, since there are so many places to visit in Jaipur that, especially with the additional time that we would take in celebrating Holi, there really was not enough time to see everything.
In looking at various websites in advance of our trip, one of the most photographed building in Jaipur was Hawa Mahal, better known as the “Palace of the Winds”. This was built at the end of the 19th century, and its unusual design with a huge number of small windows was intended to allow people inside to view what was happening in the streets outside without being seen – something that was very important for royal women who were not allowed to be seen in public without their faces being covered. Unfortunately, the only shots I was able to get of this building were from the window of the bus as we passed on our way to Jantar Mantar and the City Palace.
Jantar Mantar was the final collection of huge astrological instruments built at the start of the 18th century by Sawau Jai Singh, a Rajput king. Amongst the instruments was a huge sundial that is built at an angle of 27 degrees, corresponding to the latitude of Jaipur, which casts a shadow on a giant curved scale that allows determination of the time to within, it is said, 2 seconds. This is, apparently, the world’s largest sundial. Jantar Mantar is located next to the City Palace. Amongst other things, the City Palace was the place where Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, held a farewell dinner with the local maharajas.
One of the reasons why we chose this time to visit India was for the Holi festival. This turned out to be great fun. We, and other tourists, went to a local house where we spent the morning throwing coloured powder and shooting each other with coloured water to turn our newly purchased white Indian clothes (not to mention our shoes, skin and hair) all sorts of different colours, dancing in the garden to live Indian music, and playing the kind of games that go down well at birthday parties – albeit more commonly when you are five than when you are fifty. When we got back to the hotel to get ready for the afternoon visit to the Amber Fort, the shower looked like a scene from Psycho as we tried – unsuccessfully – to wash the primarily pink and red colour from our hair.
In the afternoon, we visited the Amber Fort, a huge fort sitting on top of one of the hills overlooking Jaipur. Probably the most memorable part of this trip was the jeep rides to and from the fort to the car park at the bottom of the hill – which were, to say the least, a bit bumpy and quite fast. Hanging on was very much the order of the day – but it did not stop me trying to get a photo of three people on one motorbike who had obviously had as much fun in the morning in getting themselves covered in paint as we had.
As a final visit of the day, we had a quick stop along the side of the road to add pictures of Jal Mahal, known also as the Water Palace due to its location in the middle of a lake, to our collection.
Combining this with a trip to a local carpet factory (where despite the encouragement of the staff, we resisted the temptation to buy a new carpet), grabbing a couple of shots of the Albert Hall lit up as we passed it that night, and a visit to Birla Mandir, a new Hindu temple completed in 1985, our time in Jaipur was very busy.
