The Pink City

Garmeet insisted we travel through the city of Jaipur during the night for Diwali because of the light show…this is just part of the festive lights we saw…a red light aimed at the old city entrance gate turns it extra pink.

A Fast Jaipur Tour

We had planned to be in Jaipur for quite a few days and had always been planning for it to be during Diwali…the Diwali part didn’t change but we ended up staying only in the city for two days. There were two reasons we didn’t stay as long…one was that our flight was changed and we came in much later, the other was that we were invited to spend the last day of Diwali in the village with Garmeet with a couple of extra days. Much more about that later in this post. Our stay in Jaipur was at the Madhuban Heritage Home which was quite lovely. We had stayed in couple of Heritage homes, which are old social hotels of sorts that the intelligentia of various cities hung out to talk art, literature, science, etc. Some of the families who own the properties generally still live in a wing of the place, but the rest of it is turned into a hotel. This one was very well maintained with a very decorative structure, interesting artwork and lovely furniture in our comfortable room. There was a pool as well and a nice dining area where we enjoyed well-prepared breakfasts. As usual the staff was very friendly and took good care of us.

The first full day in Jaipur, Garmeet hired a guide for us for the first half of the day who was very well-versed in the history of Jaipur. He first took us to see the Hawa Mahal, the red and green facade you’ll see in the photos. This place was built for the royal ladies to watch the activity out in the streets without being seen…hence the green windows. After, we visited the City Palace which was intricately painted with some jeweled inlays…we didn’t go in because it was a very similar experience to the Udaipur city palace we had visited already. After that we drove out to the Amber Fort which sits outside the city atop the hill to be protected from the Moghul invaders. Before arriving there, we stopped on at a stepwell which is a place water is stored with layers of stairs to access the water within which is at various levels. The structure of this is quite visually interesting and has worn with various patterns on the walls and stairs. Large turtles swim arround in the water, as well. We stopped to see the faraway view of the palace and a snake charmer (Sapera is the name of the snake charmer in India and they are traditionally from a Kabelia tribe from the Thar Desert of Rajasthan) walked up to me to perform. It was an interesting experience, as you might imagine, but they didn’t play the usual tune I expected to hear with his flute (do do do do do, dododododo). The Amber Fort is a large structure surrounded by a wall built from marble and sandstone. We walked through the gate and into the interior where we enjoyed the various structures and some elephants giving rides to tourists…we both decided this is not something we wanted to partake in but we did pet one and try to communicate with it for about 300 rupees. 

Before our favorite part of this tour, our guide took us to the best tea walla in Jaipur and I have to say, it was quite a good chai masala. We watched them making the tea as well which was to start by boiling the milk, then adding the ginger and other spices….not sure when the tea was added. After that, we headed to the Astronomical garden called the Jantar Mantar. This place with all it’s large astronomical instruments was built in the early 18th century by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh. These instruments were quite fascinating used to predict eclipses, track stars and other celestial bodies and of course to track time and the seasons. There are several sun-dials that were perfected upon as time went by, a structure that tracked the suns path in the southern and northern hemisphere, a structure for each star sign and much more. Really impressive that all of these instruments still work very accurately.