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An Elephanty Birthday
For my birthday I wanted to see Amber fort and hopefully ride up to the entrance Maharana style, on an Elephant. James hired our driver from the station for the day and he was our best driver yet, even with his self-proclaimed statements 'I am sorry, but I am funny' was probably my favourite, and he was right it was funny!
We managed to get to the Amber fort and into the queue for an Elephant ride. The duration of the queue was bit of a hassle with men constantly trying to sell you rubbish. In the end we just made it into a joke and kept offering ridiculous prices. It turned out they lied about the price anyway-claiming they were quoting in US dollars.
The Elephant ride was fun and a great way to see the fort, but the hassling didn't stop with the salesmen and our rider asked us for dollars-thank goodness we are English!
Amber fort was probably my favourite fort that we saw in India (a close tie to Jodhpurs) simply because the views around the fort were stunning and some of the buildings on the inside and artwork was just beautiful.
The disastrous shopping trip yesterday was definitely made up for with the shopping today. Hassan, upon our specific requests took us all around Jaipur to shops which held exactly what we were after. The first emporium we went to was a little out of the intended budget so he adjusted to our pikey ways and found us a more reasonably priced shop. We haggled a little and got some good deals and because it was my birthday I got a few freebees thrown in as well-result!
We had sandwiches, cake and brownie for lunch basking in the afternoon sun and went back to the Spice route for a delicious curry. We had to sit outside but after some complaining we got moved right underneath a patio heater and 'enjoyed' a performance of a dancing lady with lots of pots on her head and some singing and drumming. To create some heat on the outside patio they had built a small bonfire or, as Dad would say; 'like a bin with a hole in', which we made full use of in the cold evening air.
We packed as strategically as we could for our internal flight to Delhi tomorrow and I went off to bed one year older!
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Mummy Mansfield The elephant ride was great fun. You are still my baby. Xx