The Flip Side of the Coin

The time had come to get ourselves on the tourist trail. Having “done” Delhi and Agra, the next obvious place for us to go was Jaipur. And as we are in India there is really only one way to travel…. by train!

We navigated the tourist touts and general mess of Delhi Junction station to locate and board the Jaipur Express. We settled in for the five-hour journey in Sleeper Class (padded seats rather than planks of wood) ahead of us. The train left on time and the differences of travelling by train in India compared to the UK quickly became apparent. It appears that everyone, universally, talks too loudly on their phones on trains (same as Britain) but the refreshments certainly beat the weak & milky overpriced tea that GNER provides – there was a constant supply of chai (hot, sweet, spiced tea) for pennies, as well as various foodstuffs coming through the aisles – “street food”.

Dan and I have decided that as we have been in Africa for a while we will have a relaxed policy to “street food”, until we get sick that is. Going against everything the guidebook says about not touching anything that isn’t prepared and cooked in front of you, we are wondering around the streets, smelling something nice, finding the source of the smell, buying it and trying it. We have had some disasters (chilli stuffed with chilli was a little too hot!) but on the whole it’s been a cheap and delicious experiment. So our train journey went quickly with lots of chai, a game of scrabble, a range of delicious snacks and a rather strange fruit salad containing tomato, cucumber, delicious fruits and masala spice! (And we even arrived on time.)

Jaipur is the historic city gateway into the Desert State of Rajasthan and is famous for being pink. The city we arrived in certainly wasn’t pink, although it was loud, smelly, chaotic and not very historic-looking! We checked into our hotel and then got very lost trying to find our chosen restaurant. First impressions of Jaipur were not only “where is this pink city?” but also “where are we?” and “are we sure this is actually Jaipur?”

The next day in the daylight it became clearer – India’s cities are exploding, so compared to Ethiopia – where the ancient sights are an integral part of the small village they are situated in – India’s sights have been engulfed by modern city life. Climbing to the top of an old minaret, we spied a huge ornate gateway into the fabled Pink City, and reassuringly the walls – once inside – were actually pink! From our lookout the magic of Jaipur revealed itself: two sets of high walls (a city wall and a much bigger wall stretching out to Amber, the old fort that Jaipur replaced) surround the city.

Now that we had our bearings we dived back into the chaos of shops spilling their wares onto the street, the street food vendors and wandering cows. We started our sightseeing with the Jantar Mantar, otherwise known as the Observatory.

One of the maharajas had a thing about the stars and skies above and decided to build a collection of instruments to study them properly, but in the appropriately excessive style associated with the maharajas his instruments are absolutely massive… The whole place looks more like a football field filled with bizarre experimental buildings than an observatory!

We took the audio guide to help us understand it more. This was an experience in itself, explaining complex theories of astronomy in a few sentences and then talking a lot about celestial meridians, north poles, northern celestial poles and everything in between! I got the sundial instruments and one of the other instruments, although that one involved a 45 minute “discussion” with Dan! (The sun was 40 degrees from the North Pole not the northern celestial pole, I think…) Once I gave up trying to understand all the instruments I just enjoyed the surreal madness of it!

We then headed out to Amber fort, that we had seen a glimpse of the day before, situated on the bigger wall surrounding Jaipur, about 11km – and a world away – from the chaos of Jaipur. The maharajas had to move the city from Amber to Jaipur as they ran out of water and room to expand. This meant that it was more what we were used to – a large ancient monument dominating the skyline, with a small village attached to it. The monument is perched high up on the cliff-top and as you walk up the steep paths you look down on the “heavenly” gardens below, created to sooth the minds of the various maharajas. The fort-palace is a huge complex and you enter through massive elephant gates (avoiding the tourists recreating the magic by taking elephant rides up to the gates). The inside is a network of interconnecting rooms, courtyards and palaces all ornate and covered in mirrored tiles & latticework marble to help keep it cool in the hot and humid months. Although it is relatively well-preserved it was concerning to see the current restoration work going on, which from what we saw means sanding off all the old paintings and slopping terrible copies on top!

We just had time to climb to the fort protecting Amber palace to watch the sunset over the palace, avoiding the cheeky monkeys who have taken over the soldiers’ job patrolling the fort walls! Rajasthan is famous for its palaces, this was an impressive first palace – we look forward to seeing some of the others it has to offer!