Blog - India 2012 #6: Sightseeing in Jaipur
India 2012 #6: Sightseeing in Jaipur
On Monday October 8, the day we saw Taj Mahal, we took a bus from Agra to Jaipur where we stayed for 2 nights at hotel Arya Niwas. Jaipur is also known as the Pink City as a large part of it has buildings all of a brownish pink color.
On Tuesday we were free and decided to go sightseeing by hiring a car from our hotel. We had first asked for 4 hours but time went fast so we extended the tour to 8 hours (total Rs. 1420). The driver took us in turn to Amber Fort, Jantar Mantar, City Palace, and Hawa Mahal.
Amber Fort: We took an elephant ride up the hill to the entrance (watch the video below) during half of which a guy selling hats kept following us, his price always going down. While visiting the fort, we often ran into a group of monks, and another group of railway company employees. Towards the end we got to see snake charmers. There are also a few shops including a Hot Pink store.
Water Palace: On our way to the next place we did a quick stop to see the Water Palace. Some ladies posed for us, though on this picture they were distracted by a beggar boy who came to bother us. They were also begging for money too.
Jantar Mantar: This is a place that collects various old astronomy instruments, such as a compass, sundials, altimeters, horoscope-related equipment and more. All of these are impressive building-type huge instruments with stairs, and they all have plates saying they were repaired and tested over a hundred years ago. One sundial was said to have 2-second precision..!
City Palace: We had started the day early and it was about lunch time so we were getting a bit hungry, so before entering City Palace we enjoyed a quick papad (Rs. 10) being sold outside by a merchant. The City Palace is still a royal residence to this day, but about half of the property has been turned into a museum. Many walls were beautifully decorated. At a café inside, we watched a musician who used a violin-like instrument with bells added to the arch and his feet.
Hawa Mahal: This one didn't seem on our driver's list, but we asked him to stop so we could visit it. The thin-looking building has many stained glass windows. We climbed to the top by following narrow passages. There were quite a bit of visitors, some who insisted to take photos with us. Indian people seem to enjoy taking photos with unknown foreigners. The mosaic stained glass throughout the building is quite beautiful!
On the way back we asked our driver to stop at a lassi shop. We had read of this place where several shops have the same "Lassiwala" name, although all of these signs were different from the photo in our guide book. Anyway it was good! Lassi is served in a clay cup that's to be thrown away in the large barrel outside when done drinking. Some people were buying several for take out too.
Spending a day with a taxi was a good thing, as it's easy to no problem to ask for stopping somewhere on the way.
Larger sizes and more photos at Flickr
Posted on November 8, 2012 at 20:54 | Tweet
|