Friday 5/2/2008- Saturday 5/3/2008
We made it the station, found our train and our seats with relative ease…we were very surprised, since we had heard that India trains were very confusing. The train was much nicer than we expected. As soon as the train departed we were served bottles of mineral water, our own pitcher of hot water for tea and soon after breakfast. We didn’t expect to get anything, so we were pleasantly surprised.
Besides the train not being incredibly ‘clean,’ the chairs were comfortable and the air-conditioning strong. The five hour trip to Jaipur went by very quickly. Before we knew it, we were in a tuk-tuk heading to Pearl Palace…or so we thought. When we walked outside the train station, we found a tuk tuk driver with a card that had our name on it. Little did we know that since we emailed three hotels for availability, we didn’t assume that they would all send drivers?! We apologized to the driver, and then got all of our stuff out of the tuk tuk into another tuk tuk to bring us to the correct hotel.
The Pearl Palace was way better than we expected. It only cost about $15/night, but it was definitely one of our favorite hotels to date on this trip. We unpacked our stuff, checked out the rest of the hotel and then took advantage of the wireless Internet.
After a quick rest, we decided to explore Jaipur a bit. We used the map provided by the hotel to make our way to the pink walled city. It took us about 15 minutes to realize that the map was not to scale and that the walk would take much quicker than we anticipated. After crossing the roads a few times and being harassed by some locals…and when I say harassed, I mean one man attempted to grab Katie’s “ladies” when he drove by… so, we decided it would be worth just getting a tuk tuk to bring us to our destination. The tuk tuk driver did not understand exactly where we wanted to go, but he did get us to the gates of the walled city. We were grateful, as the walk would have taken us so long, we would have had breakfast.
We walked around within the walls for a bit trying to make our way towards our intended dinner stop: the LMB restaurant. The streets in the walled city are all called bazaars, and they are filled with little shops, and with every step each shop owner sees huge dollar signs on our faces. We are constantly asked, yelled at to look in their shop, and everyone wants to help us with directions, since we are obviously looking lost.
With the help of a shop owner, (who then insisted that we buy spices from him….we didn’t) we did make it to the restaurant on Johari Bazaar where a marching band had created an impromptu parade in front of the restaurant. We had some good Indian food at the restaurant along with some of their signature fruit drinks. The restaurant had a sweets shop attached to it, so we sampled some of their fares for dessert, including their “world renown” paneer ghewar (which Katie read about in conde neste travel mag). We thought it was pretty tasty… and got some for the ride home. On out tuk-tuk ride back to the hotel, we saw a beautifully painted elephant in the street, almost twice as big as the elephants we rode in Thailand. We arrived at the hotel exhausted and ready for a good nights sleep.
Today was our first (and only) full day to explore Jaipur. We hired a tuk tuk driver to bring us around the pink city, to the Amber Fort, Hawa Mahal and finally lassiwalla before taking us back home. Our first stop was a drive through the chaotic pink city to head north, about a ½ hour drive outside of town. The Amber fort was built up on the hills outside of town. The wall surrounding the fort were impressive and reminded us a bit of pictures of the Great Wall of China that we have seen (unfortunately we didn’t get to see it in person on this trip). We enjoyed the long walk (you could also hire a jeep for 200 / rupees pp) the large staircase leading to the fort, passing wild boars in the old man-made lake next to the fort.
We hired an audio guide of the fort, and we both agreed the highlight was the Palace of Mirrors. This room within the fort was decorated with a pattern that had mirror inlays in it. They were restoring it and then newly polished sectioned looked great. It was interesting to hear that the mirrors helped to keep the heat inside the building during the winter.
After touring the fort, we stopped at a textile factory where they showed us how the used hand stamps and vegetable dies to print designs on the textiles that they made. After this brief display, they then brought us up to their show room where they tried their best to sell us anything and everything that they had available. We relented and bought a few small items, after which they tried to sell us carpets. Their sales skills could use some work…. Since we told them we cannot buy anything large.
We then decided to head to the Hawa Mahal which was large palace in the middle of Jaipur. The outside of the palace is much more impressive than the inside. The harem of the royal family could use this palace as a place to watch parades and ceremonies happening in the city. These women were not allowed to be seen by the public, so the weaved windows of this palace allowed for a vantage point that the women could look out of, but he public could not look into during a ceremony. The top of the place (about 8 stories high) also provided us with a great view of all of Jaipur and made it easily understood why it is called the pink city: all of the houses and store fronts are painted a matching pink color (for the record, though, we both think the color more closely resembles orange and some paint company is very very rich now).
After the Hawa Mahal, we decided to try some Lassis at Lassiwala (thanks Megan!). Lassis are kind of like milk shakes and this place was regarded as one of the best in Jaipur, we agreed. And they served them in little clay pots, which we thought—wow, how great, they are re-using cups…. No, just like most of India, people threw them on the ground when they were done.
After resting, we ate dinner on the rooftop restaurant at our hotel. The food was very good as was the atmosphere. A man was playing an instrument that was like a cross between a violin and a flute at dinner. We both enjoyed our meals and then after some phone calls home and trip planning we headed to bed.
Up and at ‘em at 5:00 a.m., we managed to get onto our tuk tuk to the rail station by 5:30 a.m. The train was running a little late, so we didn’t depart Jaipur until 6:20 a.m., so we waited in the Tourist Board to avoid harassment and enjoy air con.