Jaipur
Jaipur is a lovely – pretty clean, has a great flyover road to skip a bunch of traffic, lovely buildings with uniform signage. The traffic chaos still exists but the architecture and city layout help.
The Amber Fort was the first stop and it’s lovely.
This is the view through the screen at the fort into the courtyard.
The fort wall seemed to go on forever.
Amber Fort
Our guide was good at taking pictures. This is us at the Amber Fort.
Ajay was a good tour guide – took us to the hot spots. We used the ramps a lot that were built for the queen’s wheeled chair when her dress and jewelry were too heavy for her to walk. He gave us options on what to see or skip and told us if we want to shop or see the local block printing, just tell him. He’s been a guide for 22 years and definitely has the personality for it. We passed on the shopping.
It’s a small world! The guide’s nephew is at CSU. I looked him up in the Student Directory and he’s majoring in Engineering.
The parking lot at the Amber Fort was mass chaos when we left and tried to find Sonu.
The Wind Palace. It’s only one room deep and the ladies used it to watch what was going on in the streets. It’s very lacy and airy.
The Jantar Mantar Observatory was fascinating and measures time in India Local time which is not used any more. India Standard Time was started by the British when they needed uniform schedule times for the trains. The offset is shown every day at the Observatory. There’s an astrology clock too.
This is a good example of the difference in ticket prices paid by Indian nationals and non-Indian tourist. The exchange rate was about 62 rupees to the US dollar.
We went on the food and market walk in the afternoon from about 3:30 – 6:30 AND we even crossed the streets about 6 times with the guide. The street crossing rivaled Hanoi! The guide was quite good and we can now find the wedding dress section and the metal pan section in Jaipur. Had some samosas that were great. People bought them by the big bags full! The stand sells several thousand a day.
I’m not sure the name if these but they were tasty chilis.
Samosas cooked in front of us.
People bought these by the bag full. They sell several thousand a day.
Some of the spices at the Spice market we saw during the Food tour in Jaipur.
Paneer – it’s fresh cheese and was yummy in all the veggie Indian dishes we tried.
He munched on the food he found along the street.
Proper gin and tonic by the Samode Havelli – lovely hotel in a historic building that was a palace for a ruler from Samode.