Wednesday 05 February

Jaipur

Today is my sister’s birthday – happy birthday Lisa! 

We were up early and packed as we’re going to Jaipur today. It’s another longish train journey (six hours). There weren’t any tuk tuks outside the hotel, so we had a nice short walk through the quiet old town until we found one. Some of the shops were just opening and some people were sweeping the street in front of their shop. Lots of dogs were wandering about, probably enjoying this part of the day with no traffic on the streets.

At Uidapur station we couldn’t find our carriage and walked the length of the giant platform before someone told us that our train to Jaipur was on a different platform! Once on board our train was lovely – modern and comfortable with at table service in first class!

We arrived in Jaipur at 1400 – rather fatigued and as seems to be the norm we (mostly Matthew, it has to be said) were accosted by tuk tuk and taxi drivers. There’s a metro in Jaipur – there’s a stop by the railway station and our hotel is very near a metro station, too – so Matthew tried to make it clear that we didn’t need a tuk tuk. One particular driver wasn’t having it and promised to match the metro fare (very unlikely) and wouldn’t leave Matthew alone. Matthew was getting exasperated and used his assertive, firm-but-fair voice – but that made things worse … he was accused of not being polite and was lectured on the importance of civility in India. The only way we could escape was to retreat back into the station. Poor Matthew  – he’s the kindest, sweetest man – is never rude, so for him to be told that was horrible.

We found another route to the metro station by walking down the (very long) platform and made our way to our hotel – not really a hotel as such, a small palatial house – a bit like an Airbnb (without the breakfast!). It’s extraordinary – right by the (absolutely enormous) bazaar and very extravagantly decorated.

On one we’d settled in we went to explore around – our guidebook has a suggested walk around Jaipur, we are staying on the route so we thought we should do it. The guidebook shows the the lovely pink buildings that Jaipur is famed for and wide streets. The guidebook doesn’t show the crazy traffic or give any sense of incessant deafening noise of vehicle horns. It’s quite overwhelming – add in the hundreds of little shops spilling out into the street, thousands of people, almost every other shopkeeper inviting us to look at their wares, stray dogs and street monkey – it was all becoming too much. 

We really needed some peace and quiet. We were by the Hawa Mahal palace and decided to go in. The palace – built in 1799 on the orders of Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh- is famous for the five-floor (it’s very high!) rear elevation has 953 small windows and latticework openings (called Jharokhas) there to enable the women to look out without being seen and to keep the space cool.

It was lovely inside – much, much quieter than the street, with a big fountain in a square and lots of places to sit and relax – just what we needed. A couple of people asked us to be on their photographs! There was an arts festival taking place with musicians and puppeteers giving performances. All lovely.

From the top we could see the Amber Fort and the Jantar Mantar observatory – one of the oldest astronomical observatories built in 1734, it includes the world’s largest stone sundial – accurate to within 2 seconds – that’s absolutely incredible! I’m hoping to visit the observatory tomorrow.

We stayed in the Hawa Mahal palace to watch the sunset over the city and then headed back into the crazy streets outside.

A man in the street admired Matthew’s moustache (he gets this a lot!); he was an artist and with his younger friend were visiting temples to make copies of the wall art there – that they then sold. They accompanied us to a small Hindu temple on Gangori Bazaar Road, near the Choti Chaupar metro station – I can’t find its name on the map – it had two beautiful carved elephants up some steps at the entrance. We had a look around and they showed us some of their work – it was beautiful, but we weren’t in the market for religious paintings at that (or indeed any) moment. I’ve been quite disturbed by the contrast between the apparent spiritualism, and righteousness and animal-friendly tenets of Hindu faiths and the viciousness of Hindu nationalist politics in India.

So back to our own ‘palace’ and on our way we were accosted by a man who’d given us directions earlier – he has a jewellery workshop and store that he wanted us to see – we accompanied him, admired the fine  workmanship, but gently insisted that we didn’t want to buy anything ‘for our wives’!