Jaipur

I was sort of looking forward to our hotel in Jaipur. It was a converted palace, or in reality a converted mansion that belonged to some minor royalty. It was the nicest place we stayed in India up to that point in the trip, although it wasn’t anything exceptional. It was near the railroad so it got sort of noisy every hour or two for a minute. There were less feelings of being hassled for tips though and they actually cleaned our room while we were out – a first for our trip. I did find it slightly annoying that at dinner they let street performers into the lawn that walked around from table to table in hopes of tips. Since there weren’t many tables they came and performed right next to us really loudly and not very well. After a few minutes we decided to get our food to go and just leave. It was really unpleasant. Most of the hotels we booked were cheap so I didn’t expect anything exceptional.  It is funny, nice hotels in India, which would be about $200 to $300 in the states seem to be more like $600 to $2000 in India. I think the idea is either you have a lot of money and don’t mind or you just can’t afford it. The hotel next door to us in Agra was $600 a night so we went and checked it out. And it really was similar to nice $200 to $300 places in the states. We booked most of our hotels on www.agoda.com for somewhere between $25 and $60 a night. We have two nights in Jaisalmer where we decided to go cheap where we booked an $8 a night place to see what it is like. Worst case we’ll lose the money and stay elsewhere.

Jaipur is a much smaller city than Delhi but not as small as Agra. People there seemed slightly less pushy. We had one full day there so we bought a multiple entry ticket to several sights and did a lot in one day. Having a driver did really make it faster and more convenient to see what we wanted.

We drove by Hawa Mahal, the women’s chamber of City Palace with small windows so women wouldn’t be seen by commoners. We didn’t go in, our driver said it wasn’t worth it but we think he may not have wanted to deal with parking there. 

We went to Amber Fort, the biggest and most important site there. Lots of people rode elephants up but we got there late and the line was long.

We saw Jama Mahal, a palace in the middle of a lake only accessible by boat, but we didn’t go in.

Our driver found us an elephant ride elsewhere. It still would have been cooler to do it where you have the view of Amber Fort but we should have looked it up and gone earlier… We always time things badly. I thought the elephant ride was slightly scary because we were so high up but it was novel. We walked around a pretty crappy, smelly area past a spot where someone seemed to be burning a giant pile of coal. The elephant itself was cool. The elephant driver said he’d been with the elephant 7 years and he was the only one the elephant would respond to. They apparently each have an individual driver/caretaker. We saw elephants in Thailand but this one was way bigger. I never saw one so close up before.

Both Agra and Jaipur had way more animals wondering around than most cities I’ve seen. Delhi has fewer and most are just stray dogs. There are tons of cows, which as most people know are sacred to Hindus. They look slightly different than cows in the states and I think they are a bit more majestic. There are also lots of goats, horses and monkeys. I’m really excited by monkeys. I never saw monkeys walking around on the street before and just find them fascinating. Danny thinks I’m weird. I have to say I was also surprised by just how used to people they are. They walk right by you and mostly don’t pay any attention.

We also went to Jantar Mantar, another UNESCO site with astronomical equipment built in the1700s and 1800s. It wasn't terribly exciting.

We saw City Palace, which also wasn’t terribly impressive. There were guys in costumes offering to take pictures with you and then demanding tips.

We went to a museum called Albert Hall with a small but fairly nice collection of Indian and International art. 

We ended the day by checking out Moti Doongari, a temple dedicated to Ganesha. All and all I liked Jaipur best of the three cities we visited. We got hassled less so we ended up buying more souvenirs there. As Iris told me, they have beautiful textiles.