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Today we visited the main sights of Jaipur, the Pink City. The old city is walled and the wall and inside buildings are all pink - or more terra-cotta really. We visited the old city, the Hawa Mahal a honeycomb looking building that overlooks the bustling bazaar (where we returned at the end of the day to do a bit of shopping ) We took some nice pics of the City Palace where the royal family still live. The old King died last year and the new King is only 16 and still at school. He is the old King's grandson as the title only passes to males and the old King only had one daughter, so the new King is her son. The Royal families in Rajasthan no longer have any political power but are extremely wealthy. We spent quite a bit of time at the Amber Fort, these Indian forts just keep impressing. This one even had a system where water was heated by fires for an indoor marble bath and indoor toilets. Some beautiful mirrored walls and ceilings made you try to imagine what life was like way back then. This fort is also a museum and one of the pieces was a wheelchair the Queen was wheeled around in not because she was incapacitated but due to the weight of her jewels. Deb and I reckon the King needed to pay her off for all the concubines he kept. Went to a semi precious stones factory, found a really nice necklace but wasn't prepared to pay $1200 AUS for it though. Then went to the Jantar Mantar, this is a observatory built by Jai Singh and a lot of the structures were way beyond our understanding of their use but we could understand the sun dial which was extremely accurate. After shopping at the bazaar the five of us, including Siri took a motorized rickshaw (tuk tuk) back to our hotel. Peak hour Jaipur traffic, no way to accurately describe this as you need to hear it and feel the near misses to understand it.
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