Jaipur-The Pink City

Posted November 20, 2015

November 20, 2015

What a great day! I’m in Jaipur today checking out the sites.

Yesterday I arrived to New Delhi from Chandigarh on the train. It was such a relief because we met Ankita’s cousin Dr. Gupta on the platform and another cousin. Ankita’s mom had asked if he could drop me off at the hotel I was checked into in Delhi. They know that Delhi isn’t the safest of areas and also rickshaw drivers are known to take you to the wrong place. The train ride was rather pleasant, we got served a nice breakfast and some chai (see my other blog post). I got off the train and Dr. Gupta arranged for an auto rickshaw and came with me to the hotel, dropped me off the front steps. Thank you Dr. Gupta! I checked into the hotel BB Palace and went to grab a bite to eat at their roof top restaurant. Nothing too fancy, a small view and I was a bit worried since I was the only there. It’s not a good sign if you no one is eating there! Ha ha. I ordered a Chicken Karahi (broke my veggie streak) and some lemon tea. The food came and oh my, this is now probably on the top 10 best things I’ve ever eating in life. Just a lovely curry! I’m surprised more people weren’t eating here but pleased with myself and stuffed to the brim I decided to go back to my lovely room to work on getting all the blog articles ready for the site. Still some kinks but at least things look manageable now. I was tempted to go out and explore Delhi but I didn’t want to get caught in being on the streets at dark so I thought it was best to stay in and get an early night’s sleep since I had to be at the Delhi Tourism office at 6:45 for my Golden Triangle Tour of Delhi, Jaipur, and Agra.

I woke up bright and early, checked out of the hotel and ready to take on my next adventure. I asked the front desk to call me a rickshaw and they told me to get one outside. It was super dark outside and there were no rickshaws so a security guard said he’d take me to one. He asks for what address I’m going to, I said it in English, he didn’t understand. I said it in Hindi, he had no clue. I showed him the paper and in Hindi he tells me it’s too dark to read anything but come with him anyways. We find a lonely auto rickshaw in the road, it looks deserted. Nope, the driver is sleeping in the back seat of the auto rickshaw and I’m the wonderful person who got to wake him up. The managed to open his eyes and quote me a fare of 100 rupees ($2). I’m sure the price should have been half that but I did wake the guy up at 6am. In Hindi the driver and the security guard kept saying 10 rupees, 10 rupees. Then I starred blankly at them asking them why? They said something in Hindi I didn’t understand. I’m sure the security guard was trying to get 10 rupees (20 cents) from me for his help out fee but I didn’t really care at that hour. We got to the area where the office should be and I told him to drop me off there. As I got out of the rickshaw I saw two Western people with huge backpacks. I was delighted and knew instantly they were on the tour with me. I ran up to them, it was still dark out, hopefully I didn’t startle them and asked if they were on the tour as well. They said yes so I started walking with them. They mentioned they were looking to a bite to eat so we found a small shop open that was serving different types of fast foods. I ordered 3 chai for us and 3 aloo parantas with chole (potato bread with chick pea curry). Now this wasn’t the best paranta in the world but at 6am it was at least something to fill our stomachs. I was just praying my stomach would hold up and thank god it did. After brekkie we walked towards the tourism office and as we got inside I noticed
another couple sitting there. They didn’t look Indian but they were speaking in Hindi. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. We met our driver and got into a 7 seater van. We exchanged names and I found out that this mystery couple was from Afghanistan. Wow, I’ve never met actual Afghans! I was super excited to learn more about their culture, food, view points, everything! So we head off with Chrissy and Chris from Manchester, UK, and Imam and Safia from Kabul, Afghan. Oh and also Beiju the driver from Southern India; Kerela, India.
We drove about 260km in crazy traffic and smog to get to our first destination in the state of Rajastan, the city Jaipur. We were headed to see the Amber Palace where the Raja ruled his state, a beautiful fortress and palace. We
had some issues getting our tour guide, I guess he flaked out but the driver found another one. The charge for foreigners was 500 rupees ($10) vs. locals 100 rupees. Imam and Safia were able to pay 100 rupees because since they have Afghan citizenship it is one of the countries that participates in a special program called SAARC with nearby countries so they are treated like a local. The tour was lovely, the palace was a labyrinth of hallways created to confuse an opposition army. There was the mirror hall and the residence where the kings 12 wives lived, 4 in each wing. As the tour ended our guide asked
our driver to take us to a place where they make block patterns on cloth. It was such a great site to see how they create hand made block printing patterns and press them onto fabrics. Obviously the tour guide received some type of commission to bring us here cause then we were introduced
to the main entrance of the store where they owner tried pressuring us to look at saris (cloth) and buy something. The one fun thing out of the shop was they did free palm reading. Of course there’s a catch to it. With palm reading comes the gem stones rings which are suggested to wear on your fingers to enrich your life. None of us were going to fall for that but it was still an interesting read. When it was my time get read, no stones were suggested for me. Apparently everything in my life is going well and I had no requirements for a stone. I asked the palm reader how often that is suggested with people and he said not very often. Well that made me feel special, didn’t it? Ha ha. We left the shop and the driver and the tour guide were in some sort of argument trying to get us to sort it out. The driver paid 200 ($4) rupees to the tour guide and he pretended like he wasn’t paid at all. We were all shocked by this but then again India is fill with opportunists. We left and were running a bit behind schedule so we decided to skip lunch and go see some more sites
in Jaipur. We saw Hawa Mahal a beautiful palace on the water then entered Jantar Mantar and City Palace. Jantar Mantar is a big observatory and the work that was done there in the 1700’s seemed far ahead of its time. Massive stone instruments were created to show the accurate time according to the sun’s casted shadow. They had created astrological maps showing the stars and also the
division of horoscope dates.

After we left Jantar Mantar we headed to City Palace where the Royal Family lived for some time before turning it into a museum. We took pictures with the Rajastani guards standing in front. They encouraged us to snap a photo and then whispered into all our ears “tips, tips, tips..” I should have asked them for a tip to have the honour to take a pic with me! Ha ha. We made our rounds viewing the clothing that was worn during that era by
the Raja and Rani (King and Queen). We visited a beautiful meeting hall and then toured around a small gallery of working artists. We got a beautiful demonstration from one of the artists
on how Jaipur art is painted from colours derived from plants and articles of earth. He had great pride in
his work and I decided I’d buy a small piece of hang up on my wall. It is a painting of a Rajastani elephant that caught my eye with such beautiful colours. He mentioned it took him 5-6 hours to complete and was 500 rupees ($10) I didn’t feel right to negotiate with him since I was getting something from an actual artist so I paid the full price. We left the palace and saw a snake charmer outside. He was playing his flute and
a cobra came out of his clay pot. Something interesting to see, felt bad for the cobra cause of animal cruelty but it did bite him a few times-guess he deserved it!

We finished our tour and headed to a restaurant for dinner. Wow, nice restaurant
but super pricey for Indian standards. I asked what the typical Rajastani meals were and the waiter pointed out a few options. I took a Tandoor chicken in some type of curry sauce with rice. All of our meals came out and I think they were all pretty good. We settled up our bill and headed to the market. I needed some pants for sleeping and I remember Auntie telling me to buy them here cause Jaipur is known for making textiles. I bought cute pair of black
pants with gold elephants for 300 rupees ($6). I think we paid $2 too much but I
guess I’ve become soft on my negotiating skills since a specific friend of mine, ahem ahem, reminded me to have tact when negotiating, ha ha..and she’s right. Well after that we headed to find our hotel which took a while since the driver got lost for a good 30 minutes. We checked in which took forever and now here I am writing this post. Tomorrow we’re off to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, I’m super excited. This is of the only monuments I’ve really really wanted to see in the world. So exciting!