Tori and Alex's Indian Odyssey: Part Five - Jaipur

Welcome to Part Five!

There are elephants in this one...

Jaipur

So the jeep trip from Tordi to Jaipur was a reasonable experience, me having nabbed a middle seat. Jaipur was the home town of our tour guide, D, and he was fully biased in favour of the city, but had warned us not to expect much from our hotel. 

We were dubious as we pulled up on a dirt track outside this wee door, but there was a lady to greet us with a dot and another lei, and she put a grain of rice on with the dot, which was pretty. The first impression of the hotel was good - the entrance hall was very colourful and regal, but we had still to see the rooms. It turns out the hotel was an old converted palace as well, but it was very different from Tordi Garh in that it seems to have been quite small and then bits were added on over the years. Everyone in our group varied on their opinion of the hotel, but in Lex and my opinion it was by far the best of the lot. We were assigned our rooms, and in an apparent pattern, Alex and I were given one of the rooms furthest away from reception. In the other hotels, this just meant one floor higher than the others, or at the end of a corridor. But in this hotel it meant something else entirely. Let me take you on a virtual journey from reception, to our room...

From reception you walked up stone stairs that wrapped around the entrance hall like a balcony and emerge out onto a rooftop terrace with a wee fountain and potplants:

Then you disappeared through the door on the far side and down a corridoor with a mesh roof with vines and trees poking through. After the corridor, you went down some skinny steps:

And into another corridor, inside this time, almost underground, with a stupid half step I forgot about every time, and got that feeling when the ground gives way underneath you and for one millisecond you think you are going to die. After that you turned sharply left and started heading up some more stairs. On the right there was a huge room that can only be described as a harem:

Continuing past the harem you ascended 3 levels of stairs with rooms and corridors going off at each level, and at this point, you would be assuming that we were fairly close to our room. You would be wrong. There are 3 roof terraces and outside steps after that:

1

2

3 (including the restaruant)

Then, a small bridge thing:

Then to the end of yet another corridor:

And VOILA! Our room! Whew!

We liked that it was an adventure to get to our room, and the next day we even found an alternate route which made it even more exciting, but the mixed opinions came from those who found it a bit irritating to have to leave about 10 minutes early for the meeting times due to the trek to reception.

That night we went to dinner and did our usual 'order way too much' thing, esp since I was officially back on a regular diet. We discovered Tandoori Aloo - which is incredible - potatoes stuffed with cottage cheese, soaked in tandoori paste and baked the the stone oven. Omnomnomnom. We also had Baked Alaska, which was delicious and hilarious.

I was excited for the next day, we were going to some palace or whatever, but D promised us elephants, and we made the whole group get up early to make sure we got a ride. In the cars on the way to the 'Amber Palace' we saw our first one! Alex was doubly excited, having never actually seen one ever before.

The palace was visible from the road and looked pretty exciting, with this epic wall trailing along the ridge of the surrounding hills. And then we pulled up, got out, went round a corner, and BAM:

Lol look at my face.

Flipping hundreds of elephants. And we got to ride them up to the Palace.

Amber Palace is just on the outskirts of Jaipur. Jaipur is the largest city in Rajastan and is a well planned city with a royal heritage with a lot of beautiful architecture and features all over the city. When Queen Victoria visited in 1876, the entire city was painted pink, and a lot remains this terracotta colour today, and it is commonly known as the 'Pink City'. The Amber (or Amer) Palace is a huge complex and is in fantastic condition, and is often given the misnomer 'Amber Fort' which is a much smaller and less majestic structure up the hill. 

The palace is up the hill from a huge lake with a saffron garden in the centre, and the extensive road to the Sun Gate is the route the elephants take. While we were waiting in the queue for the elephant ride there was a man putting turbans on the tourists, and naturally I had to have one.

Alex getting turbaned - ours were Warrior Turbans - Hoo-Rah!

Me, Christina, Lex, Monique were the only ones brave enough to get one!

And us on the nellyphant! Ours was a young 'un called Lucky and he zoomed (for a elephant) up the road, and we over took all over the show. The riders coming down would point at us and say "You got fast one!"

Panorama from the road - see elephants botton left, lake and saffron garden int he middle and a bit of the palace on the right.

The entrance square where the elephants let you off.

From here you ascended some stairs into the inner palace, with an area with beautiful arches where the King would sit on big swings and hold counsel. Behind the ornate entranceway there was a balcony where the Queens would sit, and it was built so that the King could look directly from where he would sit into the eyes of the First Queen, and no one else would be able to. The feminist in me didn't like the idea, but the girl who still loves Disney movies thought that was terribly romantic.

Marble Arches

The side of the main door. The Queens balcony was above this.

The inside of the door was tricky - you were meant to turn right, but in most palaces you would go left, and in this one, spies and assassins would go left as usual and there were two guards who just lopped off the heads of anyone who went through the wrong door, without a second thought! Directly inside was another garden like the one in the lake, no saffron, but a similar design, meant to look like a Persian carpet. We weren't meant to go down but...

Rebel.

Garden with attendant

From there we went up to the reservoirs, which were really cool - all the roofs slanted slightly and the rain water would go down drains under the castle and cool down in the earth, and then these elaborate pulley systems would bring the water up for the baths, fountains and two very clever, medieval air conditioning systems.

The pulley thing-a-ma-jig.

From here we entered the queens area, each queen had their own apartments, with sneaky passages for the King to use so the other girls wouldn't get jealous. They were all really similar, also to keep everything happy with that many ladies crammed into a small space. They would put on super heavy sari's and go and sit in these tiny towers and wave at each other and look down on the courtyard where there would be some sort of entertainment. Then they would send their eunuch to ask the other queens eunuch if the queen could come for a visit. It sounded like a very boring, rule infested life. Though one of the queens had a karma sutra picture on an archway! Naughty queen.

Queen's courtyard. You can see the towers they sat in, and right in the middle of that thing, you can see one of the weird ones from the other group lying down making a scene.

The Turban Girls being silly!

Then we all trooped out, drove back to the city and saw the summer palace which was also incredible, they built the palace on the valley floor, and then flooded it so it was like an island in the middle.

In the afternoon, we wandered around the pink city and took in the sights. This is the Hawa Mahal, or Palace of the Winds and was built to allow the royal women to observe the city life without being seen themselves.

Pretty much the most awesome tuk tuk we saw.

That night we had a fabulous dinner in a covered courtyard area, with dancers and traditional music.

I know it's fuzzy, but that is me 'crumping' with the poor ladies trying to teach me traditional dancing.

And that is some old guys scungy beard touching my mouth, and me with incurable giggles.

And there ends Jaipur! We trained back to Delhi the next morning and prepared to say goodbye, and that was not an exciting prospect, especially not knowing when or where Lex and I will see each other again! But we were leaving on a huge high, India has been one of the best experiences of my life.