JAIPUR (Day 7)

We decided to visit the fort first thing in the morning. On the drive up, the hills were simply littered with forts, long walls and temples. It was hard to figure out which one we were exactly going to visit. The Amber Fort (usually pronounced Amer) was built in the 16th century by Raja Man Singh. It was actually built before the city and was the capital of surrounding area.

The main attraction was an elephant ride to the top. So, we asked about the price. They wanted about US$ 6.58 per person, which was ok (basically the price of a good hotel room)... until we learned that was only ONE way. And yes, they waited for you at the top, but only for 30 minutes. So we just walked instead, past dozens and dozens of very persistent vendors.

Upon arrival at the top, the elephants were replaced by zillions of monkeys that walked along the palace walls and buildings. The whole fort itself was one massive, extensive maze! Endless room after corridor after narrow staircase led us in giant circles, dumping us into one new courtyard after the other. At one time this place must have housed thousands and thousands of people.

Eventually we had to follow a tour group to find our way out. For the way down, we discovered stairway used by the locals. Not a single vendor was to be seen.

We then visited Gaitor Cenotaph, which was a collection of tombs to honor past maharajas. After Jaipur became the capital, King Sawai Jai Singh made Gaitor the cremation ground for the royal family of the area. From 1733 on, the cremation of every Kachhwaha king was held here. Around 10 adults and 16 children are buried here.

The old tour guide enjoyed telling us the story of the past maharajas. Maharaja Sawai Man Singh had only 3 wives and 4 sons. This was in contrast to another maharaja who had 4 wives, 50 concubines, and 146 children (145 sons and 1 daughter). But supposedly only his two 'real' children (from his wives) and one of his favorite concubines are buried here. Another very fat maharaja (who supposedly ate 100 pieces of bread every morning for breakfast) had 350 concubines but not a single child. He then led us to the last tomb, one made from expensive Italian marble (the cold floor in thin socks was very nice after having walked around in warm shoes all morning). The carvings were very detailed, right down to the horse’s teeth (which he had us touch). He then showed us several different statues. One showed all 16 pieces of jewelry a woman has to wear when she is married. On another statue, he had us to count how many kids there were (I counted correctly, including the kid inside the pregnant woman). I failed the second test, however, of trying to tell which was the male and which was the female (she had the toe rings... of course).

A long row of children’s tomb

Next we visited the city palace, built by Maharaja Sawai Man Singh in the 18 - 19th centuries. Inside were several large spectacular museums, including a textiles and costumes museum, an armory (which had several elephant seats used for hunting) and an art gallery (ranging from huge tapestries and paintings that filled the entire wall to tiny scrolls with almost microscopic writing). This is also the home of the largest pieces of silver in the world in the form of two 760 pound water jugs. Apparently, the jugs were created so that maharaja could take enough holy water from the Ganges River with him on his trip to England in 1902. Not only were the contents of the rooms were interesting, they were often works of art themselves. For example, the ceiling of the art gallery was entirely painted with flowers.

From there we walked to the old observatory of Jantar Mantar, a large outdoor museum which was comprised of many large structures used for tracking the sun and the stars. Apparently in 1728, Jai Singh II was very interested in astronomy and gathered all sorts of different methods of viewing the heavens from all over the country and put them in one place. There were deep pits criss-crossed with lines and suspended metal bits hanging above them; large stone structures crammed into tiny little rooms with four doorways to track solar movement; and large stone structures for tracking the different constellations, as well as an extra large one for tracking the sun. On this last structure, we climbed the staircase and looked down at a huge stone ring that was marked with degrees. The staircase cast a shadow onto the ring so that one could read the sun's current position.

We walked back to the minivan, past all the snake charmers, beggars and vendors. There was still plenty of time left in the day and wanted to visit the Hawa Mahal (or Palace of the Winds), but Mukesh was feeling very sick and needed to return to the hotel.

We had some dinner then found a friend of his who agreed to drive us back into town (we were too far away to walk).

Unfortunately he just dropped us off at the outskirts of the center city with no idea were to go. We fought our way through the people, cows and cars looking for the palace. Any time we stopped moving for a second, we were swamped with people asking where we were going or what we needed, begging for money, trying to get us in their store or sell us a puppet. We were reluctant to ask for directions but eventually had no choice. Ron asked the nearest woman who wanted to charge him for the information. We wandered on ourselves and eventually found it. Unfortunately by this time it was closed so we had to be content with viewing it from the outside.

We grabbed an auto tuktuk back to the hotel after much haggling about the price. The guy got lost several times but eventually we made it.

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