Thursday 06 February

Jaipur

Matthew ordered breakfast to be delivered this morning – cereal, coffee, bread, jam and some soya milk – which saved us traipsing about looking for something to eat.

We’re located right by some of the main sights in central Jaipur and yesterday from the top of the Hawa Mahal I could see into the City Palace and the adjacent Jantar Mantar – one of the oldest astronomical observatories built in 1734 on the instructions of the Rajput king Sawai Jai Singh who is also credited with being the founder of Jaipur.

The Jantar Mantar was top of my list of places to visit in Jaipur; it was only a few minutes walk away, so it was the first stop off today. Many places in India use QR codes to enable payments and we’ve really struggled to make the system work for us. The QR codes moto be scanned and a link goes to a webpage that asks for lots of personal details, including a telephone number – that’s the point at which the system fails – we think that it must expect an Indian mobile number and although we both have Indian eSIMs that enable us to message and use data roaming, there’s no separate number, it’s somehow linking to our UK numbers. All attempts to put in different combinations of numbers (00/44/with or without spaces just haven’t worked). This is a roundabout way of saying that while it only took us a couple of minutes to walk to the Jantar Mantar , it took us about 40 minutes of Matthew wrestling with his phone to try (and fail) and buy a combination ticket that would give us access to several monuments in Jaipur. We gave up and paid cash for single entry.

Once we were in the Jantar Mantar was an absolute wonder. The site is a collection of 19 stone astronomical instruments/observatory that measure time and the position and distances of celestial bodies.

The site is dominated by the world’s largest stone sundial. There’s a really good interpretation centre too, that explains how the various instruments were used. 

It’s astounding that these instruments were made so long ago, of stone and that they’re so accurate – there’s an older sundial that’s correct to within 20 seconds and the newer, larger sundial is accurate to within two seconds!

We stayed much longer at Jantar Mantar than we expected.  Next on our itinerary were a couple of gardens on the outskirts of Jaipur that Matthew wanted to visit  – Vidyadhar Garden and Amber Palace garden, they were on opposite sides of Jaipur, so getting there required a taxi or a tuk tuk. Mindful of our previous cross words, we agreed to negotiate carefully. Ha! That was never going to happen – as soon as we exited the Jantar Mantar we were besieged – a young tuk tuk driver agreed to take us to Vidyadhar Garden(about 6km / 4.5 miles from central Jaipur), wait for us then take us the 12km / 7.5 miles to Amer (also known as Amber) Fort and back into the city for ₹1,000 – which seemed reasonable… He told us that he could also take us on an tour of the city in his tuk tuk and on a visit a ‘block printing’ workshop – which I thought I’d firmly declined! We climbed in and realised that we’d made a big mistake straight away – lesson learned: try and avoid tuk tuks with young drivers … he was 22 he told us. He drove really erratically, really fast , often on the wrong side of the road, horribly dangerously close to other vehicles – at one point we passed his friend’s tuk tuk that had broken down and he was pushing it from behind with his leg extended out to the side. There are no seatbelts in tuk tuks.

Vidyadhar Garden was made in 1988 as a memorial to to Vidyadhar Bhattacharya (1693-1751) who was the chief architect and planner of the old city of Jaipur. Jaipur is one of the earliest planned cities of India and has wide streets to a largely grid-like design. I quite like gardens, but I don’t really know much about plants or garden design – my sense of this garden is that it was very nice with its lawns and pavilions but that it would probably be really delightful if all the water features – rills and ponds and fountains were working … but they weren’t. So it was fine enough, but a bit disappointing. 

On our way to and from Vidyadhar Garden we passed the entrance to the Galta Kund (Monkey)Temple and also the modern (incomplete) Birla Mandir Hindu temple, a striking building built from white marble. It has three towers, referencing the three main faiths of India.

Our driver waited patiently and was ready to take us to the Amber Fort on another hair-raising journey to the other side of side of the city. The fort is built high on a hill to the north-east of the city and we’d seen it illuminated from the Hawa Mahal palace yesterday. The first thing to say as we approached the fort is that it’s gigantic- with extensive walls all around. Below Amer fort is Maota Lake, where there is a rectangular island called Kesar Kyari Bagh which has a beautiful saffron garden, built in the 15th century. We couldn’t get on to the isle, unfortunately, but there were some very nice views from the fort above.

Amer fort itself was also used as a palace and we visited a series of beautiful courtyards and pavilions and even a Turkish bath.

We became separated in the fort and the walls were so think that locating each other using our phones was impossible. I chatted to a nice couple who lived in Waterloo – he was a retired neurologist and she was a retired teacher … he’d been born in India and they visited often.

We were longer at Amer Fort than we expected – the day was running away from us. Our ever-faithful tuk tuk driver was waiting for us (unfortunately) and on the way back into Jaipur he paused at the Jal Mahal (Water Palace) which was constructed around 1699 in the middle of Man Sagar Lake on the outskirts of the city – it’s not open to visitors, but it looked lovely in the evening light. 

Our driver then insisted on taking us to what turned out to be his uncle’s block printing fabric workshop and store where he sold handmade shirts, shawls, custom cibers, suits and heaven-knows what else. Matthew was drawn quite far in to having a shirt made out of some fabric he’d selected for ₹2,500 (around £23). I was a little bit bored and uncomfortable with the hard sell. So when Matthew asked what I thought about the fabric I said that I didn’t really like it (which was true). We got off lightly I thought with only buying a shawl – which is lovely.

As we were leaving the store I couldn’t find my shoes, which I’d taken off before I’d gone in. Someone had warned me that their friend had had their shoes stolen on the train … so I figured that they’d been taken, which was annoying. There was a pair of big blue Saucony trainers on the floor – matthew thought they might be mine … I insisted that they weren’t. He definitely recognised them and wondered if they were his. Had I been wearing his shoes all day without realising?! We looked at some photographs that Matthew had taken of me earlier in the day and sure enough I was wearing his blue trainers – how embarrassing! I’ve no idea how I hadn’t noticed – he’s size 48 / 12 and I’m 45 / 10.5!

We were starting to run low on rupees and we’d need more to pay our driver tomorrow, so we went to an ATM and both cards were declined! (sigh). A quick call to the bank resolved it – we needed to find an ATM with a visa/Mastercard sticker on it. the nearest was at the Bank of India about a mile away – it took us ages to find it, but it worked

We went for late dinner at Go with Vegan – lovely!