Jaipur, the Pink City

Today we reached Jaipur, a bustling city.  It was onced ruled by a Maharaja (king) but of course, as we all know if you've been reading these posts, they no longer have any more power.  The city was painted pink for the arrival of the Prince of Wales in 1876, and the colour has stuck.  

The hotels all include breakfast in our stays.  It's great from a convenience point of view as you don't have to pack your bags before you go out for breakfast.  It's nice to be able to come back into the room after breakfast to brush your teeth.  

A couple of times in two different hotels, we've been surprised to have the hotel porter knock and then come right into our room.  The first time was in Jaisalmer when we asked for some extra blankets on the first night we stayed there.  The second time was this morning in Pushkar when we were finishing packing after breakfast and the porter came into get our bags.  We've made a note to lock the door every time we enter the room to prevent this from happening again.  

The drive to Jaipur was relatively short.  We drove straight to Hotel Vimal Heritage to check in.  That's Judith filling in the register.  In each hotel you have to provide your passport and they take a photocopy for their records.  It's a government regulation.  

The room is below.  The beds are pushed together.  Judith indicates you see this set up in many European hotels. 

The grounds include a swimming pool that no one is using.  

It's another quaint little haveli style hotel. We're here for two days.

We had lunch in a little outdoor restaurant and then drove into the center of the old city to meet our tour guide.  Jaipur was started in 1727 as India's first planned city.  Today we saw a couple of parts of the City Palace.

The maharaja who built Jaipur was also an avid astronomer and built an observatory called Juntar Mantar.  It was very interesting site with oddly shaped structures to measure time, date, angle of the sun, equinox, locations of the North Star, zodiac constellations, etc.  Our guide described all the structures and as he was doing this it made me think how much Steve would have liked this.

Next we explored the city palace museum filled with ceremonial gowns worn by the maharaja and maharani.  You can't take pictures, otherwise I would have.  

We toured some shops including block printing on fabric and a jewelry place. The block printing was especially interesting.  They use wooden blocks to make a multi coloured prints and the dyes are natural made of plant and minerals.  If I had any limit left on my duty free and if they had one large enough in stock, I would have come back with a very lovely table linen set.  He made the elephant print for us as a demonstration.  It was cool to see the print taking shape right before our eyes.  

The jewelry making was interesting, but looked like a sweat shop.  The stones were precious and semi precious and they afix them to a stick with using silicone and then start grinding the facets on with progressively finer sanding wheels.  

Next, we visited a large temple made of marble.  It was built in 1988, by a rich person, Brila, hence its known as the Brila Temple.  The ceremony was unsual--I can't button down the words but it was not anything like the quiet meditative scenes I've experienced thus far.  Loud music, large statues of human icons on stage dressed in matching sequin hot pink robes.  And a hall full of devoted faithfuls.  I'll definitely do a bit more reading on this unusual experience.

We had dinner at a restaurant that had music and dance.  Neither one of us got up to dance when they came looking for victims...

Tomorrow is a big day.  Off to bed to get enough rest.