Delhi, Agra and Jaipur are known as the Golden Triangle. This was my first visit to Jaipur, and I loved it. It was absolutely beautiful. We arrived in Jaipur after a nearly 5 hour drive from Agra on a sweltering, 100-degree sunny Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately our vehicle's air conditioner stopped working after 2 hours. We then had to roll down the windows on stinky backroads while our driver (who didn't speak much English) tried to find places along the road for the a/c to be fixed. After the second fruitless stop, I finally told him to just press along to the air-conditioned hotel in Jaipur.
On Sunday morning our driver (and the still broken car) picked us up at 8 a.m. to start our Jaipur touring. First up was an ascent to Amber Palace on the back of an elephant! While on the elephant, all sorts of hawkers were trying to sell us things. Thanks to some miscommunication that made wood carvings seem like a fantastic deal (he was quoting Euros and I was hearing rupees), I did in fact buy something: a carved elephant for Will. I loved the idea of buying an elephant while riding on an elephant!
We enjoyed touring all around Amber Palace. It was high above the city, so we had a fantastic view of the old and new parts of the city. Jaipur (also known as the Pink City) is very green and mountaineous. And it also had a wall built along the mountains.
One of the items on our itinerary was "Snake Charmer." I'm not sure if that's something that the tour guides devise for a laugh, or if there was actually a tourist at some point who requested that. We just said "tour of Agra and Jaipur" and the tour agency filled in the rest of the details. I wasn't impressed, but Andrew ended up touching it. I was sure to email his wife that photo right away; she thought it was pretty cool!
Afterwards, we were driven to what felt like a strip mall where you could ride a camel up the street and back. That whole process is one I don't need to repeat. First, I had intentionally worn long skirts during all my touring in India (it was too hot for jeans and I thought it was disrespectful to wear shorts or a short skirt), so getting on and sitting on the camel was awkward with the skirt hitched up to my knees. Then the process of the camel standing up and sitting back down left me hanging on for dear life. And finally, the camel wranglers were the worst tip soliciters of anyone we encountered. We planned to give them a tip and did (after we were safely off), but there was nothing pleasant about the ride.
We stopped at an observatory of sorts (imagine 12 versions of sun dials to tell the time and astrological sign). It was cool, but definitely held more symbolism for a culture where they follow horoscope more. The tour guide was estatic to hear that it was Andrew's birthday. I got additional photo requests here and agreed to have my picture taken with an 8 year old boy. Andrew was also engaged in conversation by a little boy who was very polite and thanked him for having a conversation. We also toured City Palace which had clothing and tapestries and weapons through the ages. Pretty impressive collection of museum quality items.
Like in Agra, we stopped at a local shop where we could see the local specialty handicraft being demonstrated. Here it is stone cutting and polishing. I bought a beautiful jade necklace that looks like green marbles. We passed up whatever the second handicraft was since we were shopped out. Afterwards we headed to the airport to await our flight back to Hyderabad.
I don't have any pictures of the flight, but I will mention that pre-monsoon rains create fantastic turbulence! Our flight was direct but not nonstop. We lost at least two hours: one circling above Ahmedabad waiting to land in the storm and another hour sitting on the runway waiting to take off again while runway priority was being given to the planes attempting to land before running out of fuel. The flight and the pilot were very professional but I have never bumped around so much inside of an airplane. It was also obvious that others on board were having trouble keeping their dinner down. After that we finally landed in Hyderabad and made it to our new hotel just before midnight on Sunday.
We enjoyed touring all around Amber Palace. It was high above the city, so we had a fantastic view of the old and new parts of the city. Jaipur (also known as the Pink City) is very green and mountaineous. And it also had a wall built along the mountains.
One of the items on our itinerary was "Snake Charmer." I'm not sure if that's something that the tour guides devise for a laugh, or if there was actually a tourist at some point who requested that. We just said "tour of Agra and Jaipur" and the tour agency filled in the rest of the details. I wasn't impressed, but Andrew ended up touching it. I was sure to email his wife that photo right away; she thought it was pretty cool!
Afterwards, we were driven to what felt like a strip mall where you could ride a camel up the street and back. That whole process is one I don't need to repeat. First, I had intentionally worn long skirts during all my touring in India (it was too hot for jeans and I thought it was disrespectful to wear shorts or a short skirt), so getting on and sitting on the camel was awkward with the skirt hitched up to my knees. Then the process of the camel standing up and sitting back down left me hanging on for dear life. And finally, the camel wranglers were the worst tip soliciters of anyone we encountered. We planned to give them a tip and did (after we were safely off), but there was nothing pleasant about the ride.
We stopped at an observatory of sorts (imagine 12 versions of sun dials to tell the time and astrological sign). It was cool, but definitely held more symbolism for a culture where they follow horoscope more. The tour guide was estatic to hear that it was Andrew's birthday. I got additional photo requests here and agreed to have my picture taken with an 8 year old boy. Andrew was also engaged in conversation by a little boy who was very polite and thanked him for having a conversation. We also toured City Palace which had clothing and tapestries and weapons through the ages. Pretty impressive collection of museum quality items.
Like in Agra, we stopped at a local shop where we could see the local specialty handicraft being demonstrated. Here it is stone cutting and polishing. I bought a beautiful jade necklace that looks like green marbles. We passed up whatever the second handicraft was since we were shopped out. Afterwards we headed to the airport to await our flight back to Hyderabad.
I don't have any pictures of the flight, but I will mention that pre-monsoon rains create fantastic turbulence! Our flight was direct but not nonstop. We lost at least two hours: one circling above Ahmedabad waiting to land in the storm and another hour sitting on the runway waiting to take off again while runway priority was being given to the planes attempting to land before running out of fuel. The flight and the pilot were very professional but I have never bumped around so much inside of an airplane. It was also obvious that others on board were having trouble keeping their dinner down. After that we finally landed in Hyderabad and made it to our new hotel just before midnight on Sunday.
