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Jaipur. What on earth do you say about Jaipur? It's the capital of Rajasthan and boy did it feel like it.
Rahul said goodbye to us (finally!) at our hotel, the lovely Hotel Pearl Palace. This place really did feel like a palace compared to the previous hotels, sporting spacious, well decorated rooms and a famous rooftop restaurant, the Peacock, where many from all over the area come to visit. The only downside to the room itself was the workers outside our bathroom window who liked to take great pleasure in snorting and spitting in the most over accentuated and disgusting manor possible, at all hours, day or night. I swear, these guys lived for putting weary travellers off their food.
Our first full day in Jaipur consisted of the craziest mission into the Old City. Our first stop - a famous Lassi bar that sold the thick, sweet, milky beverage in bulky terracotta tumblers. We, in our infinite wisdom, decided to walk to Lassiwala on the way to the old city. Literally every 3 minutes on the dot, we were stopped by a rickshaw driver asking us to hop in, and then spending the next 2 minutes after trying to stop him pestering us. And this went on and on. I soon understood why they gave us the 'stupid tourist' look when we consistently said no. One thing I've noticed about Jaipur is that it has absolutely no pavements. None at all. This makes walking from A to B, no matter how short the distance, a hazardous and smelly affair. I say smelly be it's you're unfortunate to have to dodge the crazy traffic coming towards you by ducking towards the nearest avenue wall, then you quickly notice the overpoweringly pungent smell of urine. Jaipur, I felt, was India's toilet bowl. This wasn't just a one off occurrence, it stank everywhere. Even my time in Glastonbury festival could prepare me for the smell.
From Lassiwala, we trudged and ducked on in the baking heat, making our way to the Albert Hall (no really that's what it was called), the city museum. This was a gorgeous building that the emperor built in the 1800s then didn't know what to do with it,so they turned it into a museum. That's Indian think for you. The museum itself was old and tired looking, with different artefacts ranging from the moghul area to Egyptian mummies. It was an odd place. More selfies with random Indians.
From there it was up to the Old City gate, within it a maze of busy bazaars and shops where you can buy literally anything from gems to saris, bicycles to lead piping for your house. It was a terrifying busy place, full of yelling and spitting and cows and zooming motorbikes. It was dusty, hot and stressful. This was a capital city in India.
We made our way, our lives in our hands, up to the city palace but it was extortionate so we sat in the shade before making our way to the Isarlat tower in the centre of the old city. We the only ones in the tower, which made sense considering the awkward back entrance we tried to find. The steps going up were smoothed and filled out, so it resembled a lumpy, slippery ramp rather than ascending stairs like normal towers. I have no idea why they did this but it made the climb up and especially the claim down tricky to say the least. The view from the top was worth it though and was peaceful and secluded compared to the chaos down below. From the tower we struggled on to try and find somewhere to eat, considering we had only had a lassi to drink all day and had walked around 8-9km in blistering heat. We finally tumbled into a air conditioned restaurant (that's all we needed!) called Natraj and ate a glorious meal that saved our sanity and weary feet.needless to say, that night we slept pretty damn well.
The next day we hit the Amber Fort via rickshaw, an impressive fort housing the Emperor and his family for generations, situated about 10km away from the city centre. The walk up to the fort from the parking area below was filled with Indian tourists and worshippers, all trying to pay homage to the Hindi gods from the temple inside the lower courtyard. It was a vibrant site once again, with flowered saris and over-excited children. The fort itself was an absolute maze - we spent 2 hours in there but I honestly believe we could have spent an extra 2-3 hours. The number of courtyards seemed never ending, lush green gardens, bare and baron and important looking pavilions intrinsically decorated with mirrors and precious stones. Unlike British Royal houses, every door was open enabling to explore every nook and cranny. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Even the pesky obtain teenagers who constantly tried to take sly photos of us with us noticing didn't spoil it.
We chilled out in the evening knowing full well that we had to wake up at 5am to catch to our 7 hour train to Udaipur.wish us luck!
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