Jaipur !

Rajasthan was on the cards for quite a while now. The BhanGarh fiasco comes to my mind. There were slight feelers about Jaipur after Christmas, but then as usual, nothing was concrete. Come friday evening, around 2130, and I am back from watching Madgascar-2 (ok types movie) and Suneeth is back from the gym. We decide to head off to Jaipur.

The spontaneity of the decision and having no chalked out plans to do whatever gave us the initial adernaline rush. Tanked up Suneeth's Lancer. stored some essentials from an In and Out and we were zooming off on the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway. The road to Jaipur is pretty good, except that there are too many trucks at the nighttime. Around 0000 hours and we hit the first toll booth.

Not much cash was the first of the issues, loads of fog the second. Hunger struck. We stopped at the first dhaba and the dal fry was delicious. Not many times have we paid 50 bucks for a dinner for two. :-) The elusive ATM was nowhere to be found on the entire highway..! We made it past the last toll booth with 0 cash left. Reached Jaipur at around 0330. ATM problem solved we drove off to the railway station. We rested in the lancer after steaming hot tea and sandwiches. It was soon daylight.

Looking for a place to freshen up and breakfast, Suneeth found Pinkz (Breakfast from hell).
The buffet breakfast there was horrible. If not for the interiors and the people this could actually have been a lowpoint in the trip.

This done, we were off to the walled city (which is actually pink) and houses the famous HawaMahal. This structure is beautiful. We met a tour guide here who offered to show us around the city for a meagre 50 bucks. We hired him.

So now that we had the tour guide with us. Heres some interesting trivia : This facade was built so that the Queens could see the parade passing on the road below and fitted with black curtains so that nobody could see the queens. I wonder why ? The queens were all supposed to be good looking, why then were they so averse to being looked at ! Anyways the next stop was Jhulelal Temple. Then Queen Gayatri Devi's handicraft factory and then the City Palace.

JhuleLal Temple



City Palace.

Having had enough of museums, it was time for some forts. However the guide suggested we go the Shashoidya Gardens first. We took his advice. The gardens were ok, but we gathered another fun fact here. Rani Shashodiya agreed to marry the Raja only if he built her this palace outside the city with exclusive gardens. That he did. And then she had a son named Madho singh. Madho Singh was 250 kgs, 7 feet 3 inches and had a chest expansion of 3.5 feet ! He also had nine wives and 101 dasis. Too bad he still never became a father. Anyways I did get a chance to do my famous handstand so was feeling pretty good about myself as we left the gardens for Tiger Fort(Nahargarh).

Rani Shashodiya's palace

Near perfect handstand.

Nahargarh was elusive. We lost our way once, corrected it but found another landmark enroute. The Jal Mahal. This was Raja's 'pleasure palace' for which he got a dam specially to create the lake and then this palace in the middle of water. Some antics these Rajas had !

Jal Mahal.

There were a lot of tourists here, mostly Indian. It was sad to see how everybody was littering the place so much. When will we start to care !

Anyways, off to the tigerfort. This one was Awesome.

Tiger fort

Inside the fort.

From top of the fort.

With this done, we quickly headed off to JaiGarh. This housed the famous Jaivaan which is the largest canon in the world. Had to walk around a km to reach this one, but then the superlative canon was enough to keep us motivated. ;-)

Jaivaan inside JaiGarh

Road to Amber fort(as seen from Jaigarh)

Next stop was Amber Palace. This one was the oldest and very beautiful. It also has an elephant ride but the jumbos were nowhere to be seen while we were there. This palace is also called the Mirror Palace for all the mirror work done inside.

Amber Palace

Tiny mirrors used in this artwork.

More art.

This was the last of our stops in Jaipur. We reached the parking and were about to take the car when we could actually smell heaven. The fragrance of food was actually so good that I had to enquire its origin. Turns out there is a small Paratha shop nearby. We helped ourselves to steaming hot and delicious Parathas. They were pretty awesome. :-)

Finally with this happy conclusion we bode farewell to Jaipur. Its a nice city and a quick weekend getaway from Delhi. Some spots were missed esp the Pandavpul village. Next time. :-)

We had a flat tire on the way to add to our experiences and were back in Delhi by around 0030 after having a near midnight dinner at a Dhaba enroute.

Awesome trip ! Cheers !