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Wednesday : fine
Much better sleep last night, the medicine seemed to do the trick. We were up early today, we are on the move to Jaipur. We had another good rooftop breakfast, packed up, checked out and met our driver in the lobby. Then we hit the road to 'the pink city' Rajasthan. Shane Warne is the Rajasthan royals captain, and Watson plays for them too.
Today is the main day of Diwali, so HAPPY DIWALI!! We did some reading up on the festival, It's a nation wide festival, the festival of lights. For five days people are giving gifts lighting fireworks and candles to lead lord Rama home from exile.
It was a very easy 270km drive today, it was all over in around 3hrs, much easier than Nepal. I think they could be best highways so far, even better than China. We did have to dodge a heap of highway camels, they're big fellas too, towing trailers with all sorts of things in them, including people. There were all sorts of animals on the road, now that i think about it. Camels, cows, horses, donkeys, dogs even pigs. The trucks are colorful here still like Nepal too, they have truck decoration stalls on the side of the road, selling tassels, tinsel, stickers everything you need to brighten up your truck. We made a couple rest stops and every time we did, all the people would say Happy Diwali! And a where you from? The people are very nice ATM, it's a nice time to be here.
Looks like the harvests are over too, lots of empty wheat and rice fields, it's taken four countries to see how rice is made. We have just seen the growing to harvest stages, not what happens to grain once it leaves the farm and gets taken to the factory.
We arrived in Jaipur and immediately noticed the huge walls, built up over hills and around the town. It looked like the great wall of India, we checked into our hotel and we had views of these two huge forts and the walls from our window. Turns out that we are staying just outside Jaipur, in the old city of Amber. The royal family use to live here, but then built Jaipur and moved over the hill.
After a short break we met our guide and were off to our first attraction. It was at Jaipur's city palace, a Maharaja named Jai Singh II moved from Amber fort (the fort we can see from our hotel window) and built Jaipur town and the palace in 1700's.
We were told that the 14 year old Maharaja (the King of India) was in the palace. They raise a flag from the palace when the king home. We didn't see him though, he was probably at school. He became king after his grandfather died at 80. The previous Maharaja had no sons only daughters. The royal family have no power in India, so having a 14yr old king isn't all that crazy.
The palace was great, lots of nicely decorated courtyards, gardens, and meeting halls. It was cool how everything was pink, in fact all the buildings in Jaipur are pink. They were painted in 1876 for welcoming King Edward 7th. The only building that isn't pink is the 7 story royal residence, that's yellow. There are residents that have been converted into exhibits showing weapons, royal clothing, pictures and stories or all the different Maharajas. One in particular was a hefty fellow standing over 2m tall, 1.2m wide and weighing in at a whopping 250kgs, he also had 108 wives, I suppose there was a lot of him to go around, his gown looked like a fancy bed sheet.
Next we went across the road to Jantar Mantar it's an observatory. It was built by the same Maharaja that built Jaipur and the palace, a Mr Singh, he was a very smart cookie. It was the weirdest looking place when we first walked in, it just looked like all these giant bizarre sculptures. I'm glad we had a guide to show us how all the instruments worked. Two were sundials including the worlds largest 27m high and the shadow it casts moves 4m per hour. The first sundial that Singh built was so accurate that it used 20 second increments. All the instruments worked off the suns shadow, calculating eclipses, the rotation and position of the earth and certain stars like the north star. Mr Singh built five of these observatories throughout India, it was definitely worth the $2 entry fee.
From the observatory we could see the back of the Hawa Mahal, this was a building used by the royal ladies to people watch. Back in the day the royal ladies weren't allowed to be seen in public.
When we left and were on our way back to the car, we saw a snake charmer. I have been waiting since we arrived in Nepal to see these guys, we jumped right in, and sat down next to him. The black Cobras eyes were so... Black. He wrapped one around us too, of corse he was holding the head. It was great to finally see one, I thought we would miss out. He was playing his flutey thing and the Cobra would just follow it be feeling the wind, pretty cool.
We got to the car thankfully with no snake bites and went back towards the hotel. We stooped off at a big lake where there is a water palace in the middle. This was used by the royals as a summer getaway, ahh to be a king. Its privately owed now, and apparently going to be converted into a restaurant.
We continued the tour to Amber fort, and it's huge, and for a change not pink but a mustardy colour. From up top we can see all it's surrounding walls and the town we are staying in below. Which use to be the ancient city but now it's just peaceful suburb.
Construction of the fort/palace began in the 1500's, it was extended by the Singh's before moving to Jaipur. We had a great walk threw, thanks to the guide again. It was good to see all the grand courtyards and gardens. We got to see special mirrored entrances to the royal ladies bedrooms. They used candles and the mirrors from Belgium that throw off a heap of light at night. We also got to see the most important thing of all the royal can! What a bathroom too, it had a separate room each for the tub, toilet, it even had a massage room. Funny thing was, after all this time we could still smell wee wee. There were two main residences one was used in winter and the other one for summer. Both built in different areas to stay warm or cool, the summer palace also had natural. They wet special sheets and guided the air through port holes and corridors to the wet sheets. We got to go up on the roof were there was great view of the mountains, walls and Amber town. There was a bath and stage up there too, the king use to have people preform, while taking a dip or enjoying the view from a chair under the gazebo.
Well we said our thanks and goodbyes to the guide after a stop off at a textile workshop. We got to see how they hand print all their fabrics to make well anything you want. It was so a trap but we have been around the block once or twice now. The guide insisted we just take a look for our benefit, and don't buy a thing if we don't want to. I got a free tea still.
Back at the hotel we though we would hit them up for dinner. They had setup tables and chairs on the rooftop, so that we could watch all the Diwali fireworks. It was nice to watch the sunset and all the lights and fireworks to appear. Well the crackers have been going all day, some are quite big and loud, far too big for the children throwing them.
They say that the brighter and cleaner the house is the more chances of guiding the god to you. The streets had a heap of over head lights and tinsel too, pity they didn't clean up the streets like they do their houses though.
After awhile of waiting for a waiter we gave up on the hotel for food, and went across the road to a shop for some dinner. It wasn't the healthiest of dinners but it was cheap, and we got to eat in bed while watching movies.
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