Travel article: Jaipur

Next stop: the Pink City- Jaipur.

Another city = another train. An early call at 5am... lucky us the train left on time, arrived on time 5 hours later and we’ve able to sleep in our 2nd class seats! We even attended a dance show on some Bollywood songs by a little kid and a guy woke up and put his 3 or 4 metres long turban.  Welcome to India!

We arrived and a Tuktuk driver complimented Cedric on his hair so he got the business : he drove us to our hostel.

We discovered a city that could be synonym of chaos! Cars and tuktuk everywhere, construction projects, horns every 2 seconds, 3.2million people. A mess!

After a week in India, it is getting harder to handle the constant noise!

Jaipur is called the Pink City and its walls have been painted when Edward VII came from England to India and pink being a sign of hospitality, all houses were painted in Pink.

Well today, only one or 2 streets still have pink houses and I would say they are more orange than pink. Nothing to compare with Toulouse the real Pink City (chauvinist moment!)

We first headed to the City Palace. When we arrived we saw some elephants, a man looking like Maharadja and many soldiers, servants and elephants ! I asked Cédric if the guy was the real Maharadja (still living there) and each time he wanted to come home there was a ceremony. (Another cliche !) Well no, it was a movie shooting ...

We wandered around for 2 hours discovering the many rooms and the 4 seasons doors (beautifully painted and adorned with precious stones!). We also discovered 2 massive silver jars that the Maharadja filled with 4,000 litres of water and brought to England when meeting Edward VII because he was really religious and only used water from the Gange to do his ablutions!

 

We then headed to the Hawa Mahal- another palace with an interesting facade letting women behind it been able to see outside without being seen. This Rājasthān icon is interesting but I was expecting to be bigger.

We then discover the main Bazaar (we love the saris worn by married women only), the flower market and the jewellery market, trying to stroll around but we gave up after 45min: too much traffic (camels, cows and horses sharing the road with tuktuk, cars and motorbikes), no footpath and too many questions from locals. Welcome to India !

At night we went to the movies and danced and laughed so much watching a Bollywood movie ! We couldn’t get the jokes as it was in Hindi but the atmosphere, the dances and the locals laughing hard made us love that experience !

 

Jaipur is also known for the amazing Amber Fort. Located 10 kilometres away, we took a uber to discover it. Dominating Jaipur and a lake, the walls are huge and intact. Home of the Rajput Maharadja and scene of many attacks, the main buildings of the fort were built in the 17th century. The doors of the fort are huge !

A lot of people today reach the fort with elephants but we walked as they seems not in good shape...

The view from the top- on the walls- is amazing. My favourite room: the Mirror palace with many precious stones, mirrors and beautiful colours. Not bling bling at all ;)

 

We then walked 2 kilometres to reach the next stop: Jaigar fort located on top of Amber fort. While the fort is not as interesting as Amber fort, we loved walking in the tunnel that was built to evacuate quickly when under attack. For 20 minutes, no horns, no Indians asking to take selfie (well still one in reality...) and no noise at all! A dream came true :)

We loved the colours, the smells, the city palace, the fort and all the stories but the noise and agitation starts being hard to handle. Next stop the blue city: Jodhpur !

Some recommandations:

# don’t stay at The Hosteller. It’s expensive for what it is and on a noisy road!

# we had our meals everyday at the Peacock Rooftop, we definitely recommend it! I still remember the taste of the lassi Kiwi-Lime-Banana.

# don’t miss a Bollywood movie ! It was so much fun. Watch Badhaai ho, we loved it and can’t wait to watch it in English!

#city palace : 500 IR

# Amber fort : 600 IR

   


  

   

  

  


   

   

  

     

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