Jaipur is known as the Pink City as much of it is created out of pink sandstone, although it looks vaguely orange to me. The best example is Hawa Mahal. What wasn’t built pink was painted pink to welcome the Prince of Wales in 1876. Even though it was built in the early 1700s it was built on a grid system, hence the reference to Milton Keynes. It’s famed for its gems and its turbans. One is considerably cheaper than the other, and I just managed to avoid getting “stung” when looking at one of these – no prizes for guessing which but I clearly have no need for turbans, or if I’m being honest earrings🤣. Apparently turbans are 5-10m long so they can double up as a “rope” to lower a bucket down a well. Proper turban tying is a dying art so they now sell “ready made” turbans for millennials, a bit like bow ties! However huge moustaches are very much “in”. Allegedly it’s not just a sign of masculinity but it keeps the dust from the desert out of the nose.
Our exploration of Rajasthan, the state of Kings, began early to beat the traffic. It was explained to us that the Kings still very much exist – they have their titles, their palaces and their wealth but no power, unless they go in to politics. Whilst many still live in their palaces, many of their rooms are now being turned into museums and hotels to help with the upkeep. We passed some huge palaces which were now hotels and wedding venues for up to 1000 guests. Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan and it appears to be the wedding capital. Everywhere we went there were pre-wedding photo shoots with entourages of photographers, videographers, gophers carrying equipment and huge deflectors. Surely I can’t be as annoying as them?! They were all very colourful and elaborate, not one white dress amongst them. They all looked boiling hot though.
We started at the Amber Fort, which isn’t a Fort it’s a palace. The fort is above it on the hill, and we didn’t go to that! It’s a long, narrow very windy road up to the Palace and we had the choice of elephant, jeep or our car. We would never have gone on an elephant as we consider it inhumane, but there were queues of people wanting to ride like Kings to the palace at the top of the hill. This King and Queen chose the comfort of our own car, and were relieved to hear that most of our guides/driver’s clientele did the same. This was the first time we were somewhere that was up in the hills. The views were breathtaking and the air much clearer.
Like most of the forts and palaces that we have seen so far there are vast quantities of carved marble and different decorations making up the multiple different palaces in the palace complex. Unlike the Taj Mahal the Amber Fort is decorated with fresco painting rather than inlay work which is interesting considering Jaipur is renowned for its work on polished gems. My favourite palace was the mirror palace made up of highly polished pieces of mirror from Belgium and coloured glass from Italy. In particular there is the “magic flower” at the base of one of the pillars. Using hands to cover various parts of the flower at any one time reveals not only a different flower (lotus) but a whole array of animals – a scorpion, fishtail, snake and elephant trunk.
Given the heat in Rajasthan the water transfer and cooling system was elaborate. It went through three chambers to cool and in the women’s quarter was mixed with the rose petals to created a cool, scented channel for the water to flow through for the women to use. The philosophy of “happy wives, happy life” obviously existed then!
From one palace to another, this time the City Palace of Jaipur. This is where the current King and his family have some private rooms. Apparently we could have met him for $100. That sounds far too cheap to me, but we still passed on the offer. The current King became King at the age of 12 and is the grandson of the previous King. There are no such things as ruling Queens (imo needs changing) and as the last King only had a daughter he adopted her son so that he could be King when the time came.
The museum is full or royal artefacts dating back centuries with an emphasis on one of the sports of Kings – polo. Invented in Persia, but no rules until they were eventually written by the British. The current King’s great grandfather was an exceptional polo player and died playing the game in Cirencester of all places.
The King’s hall of private audience with its huge heavy chandeliers is opulent and still used today for religious festivals and ceremonies. Allegedly to test the strength of the ceiling they would stand an elephant on the floor above before the ceremony to reassure the King, although we noted that the thrones were still set to the side of the room well away from the chandelier just in case! At one of the entrances are two huge silver water urns that were filled with holy water from the Ganges and taken to London (and back minus the water) for the coronation of Edward VII. This hall leads into an inner courtyard – “courtyard of the beloved”. It has four gates, one for each season and each one beautifully decorated. Instagram and weddings made it impossible to get a photo of more than two of these gates.
Our final official tourist stop was the Jantar Mantar astrology museum built in the early 1700s. This is a “naked eye” observatory meaning that the instruments lined up to the various constellations so that they could be seen with the naked eye rather than with a telescope. It also measured time and has the largest sundial in the world, which appeared pretty accurate some 300 years later. Other instruments tracked the movement of the stars and planets to predict eclipses etc. Many civilisations “lived” by the stars and I know that it was built a century after Galileo’s death but it’s still fairly impressive.
Given the late arrival the day before and our early start for the day, the day of rest was perfectly timed and I didn’t go further than the pool area!
Today was another day of travel as we journeyed from the Pink city to the Blue city of Jodhpur, yes famous for those polo trousers. India is vast so this was a 6 hour journey. I was hoping that everyone would be watching the cricket World Cup final but we started 4 hours before that did and cows aren’t interested in cricket. Watch us pass a “cow jam” just walking down the main dual carriageway – the original version was a minute but you can see the shortened version here.
Thankfully that is our last long road journey and we’ve arrived safely at our beautiful hotel in Jodhpur. And I can’t believe we are just over halfway through our Indian adventure.
Fabulous story and love the pix!
Thank you. I don’t know how much of what they tell us is true, or just made up to sound good for us🤣