The Pink City
- Aug 11, 2016
- 3 min read
Sophie: Jaipur is called “The Pink City” because Prince Albert visited, and to welcome him, they painted the old city pink, of course! It’s a busy place so we were a little apprehensive, we haven’t gotten on very well with cities so far. Luckily, Jaipur was different.
But it still has its challenges...
The day we arrived we were supposed to go for an elephant ride, but turned it down because of my time at the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai (Thailand) I got a walk-through of how elephants are “trained” to be ridden by tourists and it’s impossibly cruel. If you’re headed to Thailand at any point and want to do some volunteer work I can’t recommend it enough www.elephantnaturepark.org. It’s ace and you get up close and personal with the elephants and can really help the park.
Sorry for the detour! Anyway, back to Jaipur. The hotel food was predictably bad so we weren’t in the best mood when we headed out on the tour the next morning, Matt wasn’t feeling up to it so Greg and I ventured on alone… and it turns out that Jaipur is pretty awesome!
Our guide was lovely and spoke excellent English (plus several other languages). He told us there was a palace we can go to see, but that most English people aren’t too impressed because we have better palaces in Britain. Another factor was the current “King” of Jaipur and his greed. The previous king and queen had only one daughter, and she married her driver – much scandal.
The princess was away studying in another city so left her husband in charge, and as he had previously been a member of the public, he was very greedy for money (the guide’s words, not mine). This meant that whereas other entrance fees would be classed as pricey at 600 rupees (£6), he had put the entrance fee to 2500 rupees (£25). Nah we're fine thanks.
We quickly saw the “Wind Palace” where royal ladies could watch street processions from behind the protection of the usual honeycomb windows.
The next stop was totally unexpected – a collection of nineteen architectural astronomical instruments called Jantar Mantar built by a king in the 1700s. It features the world’s biggest stone sundial and is a UNESCO heritage site.
Legend.
This is a reservoir built in I can’t remember when, sorry, we couldn’t stay long though because a French TV show was filming there!
Finally, we went to the Amber Fort and it was spectacular, I think it’s my favourite fort! Not something I ever thought I’d have…
The guide got us in for cheap by saying we were students and showed us all over with a great in depth tour. My favourite was hearing about the Queen who had 15kg worth of jewellery which she insisted on wearing all at once, though she couldn’t walk because it was too heavy, so had a chair designed so she could be pulled around the palace by servants instead. Excellent.
We saw the baths where they would get hot water mixed with oils, and were introduced to the palaces current… residents.
The king at one point had 12 wives, so had a secret tunnel built which went from his chambers to all of theirs. At night he would pick a wife, knock on her door and spend the night, and forbid her to tell the others he’d visited. None of them were allowed out after dark so wouldn’t know who he had visited the previous night, so they couldn’t get jealous. That was the idea anyway.
No men were allowed inside the fort in case the wives got any ideas, but the women needed some form of entertainment. So the king organised for a daily market inside the fort, but only with women running the stalls. Even other family members were banned in case someone took a shine to another wife’s brother etc etc.
This is the "welcome window". When the king returned it allowed the wives to shower him with flowers...wow.
These were the cooking pots used to feed the soldiers.
Greg: In the evening we were dead tired of the god awful hotel food, which it sounds silly, you have to eat as navigating Indian highways will only lead to you not only being hungry but also confused. We took a tuk-tuk to a guide book recommended hotel (a lot of places are inside hotels) and climbed the high rise to the top. An absolutely full to the brim of Westerners haven awaited us, so much so we had to go up more stairs where we ate inside a sort of hut on a roof. We had our first bit of fish in weeks and chilled on the roof with beers and ice cream. Good times.
Next stop, AGRA!
Comments