City Palace has this one great courtyard with four beautiful doorways representing the four seasons. We had a mini photo session. Since it is still in use you can only view the outside areas, so there wasn't a ton to see. We did also get to see the royal carriages, which were interesting. Afterwards, we headed to the Jantur Mantur, which is kind of like some weird modern garden. Some guy built all of these different astrological sculptures in this garden and some time telling fixtures. It all was several hundred years old but looked very futuristic.
Before leaving the Pink City we all three had some henna done. Rangina was the cutest lady who did our henna. She was very sweet and we were amazed at how quickly she was able to draw the designs. Henna is all natural, made from leaves and dyed with saffron. They squeeze it out a tube like an icing bag and it dries on your skin after an hour. Then you dab almond oil on it to help keep it moisturized then the excess bits flake off and leave the orange design on your skin, which lasts about three weeks.
After leaving the pink city we headed to the outlaying hills to see Amber Fort. We stopped on the way to get a fresh coconut water, they just hack off the top of a coconut and stick in a straw! Annie was super excited about Amber Fort all week because you can ride an elephant up to the top of the hill to the fort. Annie is obsessed with elephants. We were so bummed when we got there to find out they only run the elephant untill 11am bc it is so hot after that. So we had to drive up rather than ride an elephant, a bit of a bummer. Amber Fort is high up in the hills surrounding Jaipur and had great views. The have a Hall of Mirrors which can't quite rival Versailles, but was still very pretty. There wasn't much more to see other than the views. On the way out we heard so music and turned around to see a couple of snake charmers...eeeek! I wouldn't get any closer to them than about 20 feet. But Kate was brave and pet one of them on the head! It wasn't all that cool the cobras just sit there in a trance. I always thought they danced to the music, but the just sit there without moving. Before coming to India I was a bit worried about the snake charmers, I thought they would be on every street corner. But apparently it is now illegal to own a snake as a pet in India. So fear not snake haters!
On the drive back down we saw all of the elephants being walked down the hills so we pulled over and got to pet them and take some pictures. In Jaipur they paint their elephants in bright neon colors, one even had pink toenails! Of course, with everything else in India, the elephant handlers wanted tips for letting us take photos. EVERYONE in india wants tips, you take a picture they want tips, you smile at them they want tips, you speak to them they want tips. That is one thing that is hard. Some deserve tips while others haven't but you know they are so poor but you can't give to everyone. It is quite a moral dilemma every day.
By this time it was early afternoon and super hot so we went bak to the hotel for naps in the room then Sameer picked us back up in the eveing to take us to Monkey Fort before sunset. This really isn't anything to see other than a temple at the top of a hill with a bunch of monkeys on it. It did have another great view of the city, but we enjoyed ourselves by befriending a small pack of local boys offer their "guide" services. They were really cute and fun so we let them hang around and we all took pictures with each other and gave them a small tip after. They kept trying to get us to feed the monkeys but we wouldn't do it for fear of rabies!! I ended up opting out of the pricey shot before the trip.
Next we headed out to Chakadali, a little man-made village outside of the city set up to show the tradional food, customs and dance. It is like a little mini-carnival. There was rides, dancing, boat rides, elephant and camel rides and a meal with traditional foods. We were a bit disappointed as the book and some people made it out to be a little more cultural than it actually was. It reminded me a bit of the old western town at Six Flags but indian rather than cowboys! It was overly cheesey but was full of Indian tourists from other cities. We were the only western tourists there. After we had a look around and ate our dinner we headed back to Jaipur with Sameer to Tiger Fort, his favorite place in the city after dark. It was about an hour drive one dark deserted mountain roads with no one else in sight. I only had terrible abduction thoughts once or twice. But we really had no reason to doubt Sameer and he came through with an amazing mountain top view of Jaipur by night. It was a million twinkling lights, but you could still hear the madness of the city below, the honking...the never ending Indian honking!
Sameer dropped us off around midnight promising to pick us up at 5:15 to take us to the train station for our trip to Agra. He was there right on time and hadn't slept the whole night. After a full day of driving us from 9 am to midnight, he spent the rest of the night trying to get more jobs to earn more money. If you ever go to Jaipur get in touch and I can give you Khan and Sameers numbers as they were some of the kindest and most trustworthy people we have met thus far.
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1 comment:
I am LOVING your posts about India. Davis would have loved the Monkey Fort! Ha! Keep the updates coming :)
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