Jaipur - The pink city

We arrived in Jaipur at 4am from Agra by train, The hotel actually picked us up in their jeep, this was a massive relief as I thought we were going to have to wait until morning (later that morning) to check in and crash. We got our room straight away, dirty sheets (they had not had time to clean the room) but that is what sleeping bags are for, and happily went to sleep... to the loud knocking at 11am, I did not answer it but the hotel staff must have felt that we had had enough sleep after seven hours.

Still we got up (a little red eyed) and caught a cycle rickshaw into town (I am still not bored of them!! they are great), we could not see any pink yet but we were hopefully, as we passed the famous Indian cinema that looks like a big merengue inside, James in Varkala recommended it as a good experience (thanks James it was great, never seen a cinema like it). We booked some tickets for that night; buying cinema tickets has never been so complicated. One ticket booth is for the next film and the other booth (other side of the cinema) was for all future showing, easy when you know the score but a bit of a puzzle when you don't speak Hindi. I walked between each booth a few times before I could get our tickets!!

Hawa Mahal in Jaipur where the Maharajah's harem would watch the world from the safety of their latticed windows.

We walked a bit further east and finally saw a pink gateway, again not quite as I expected, still not managing to get my expectation level in line with Indian reality. The pink was a kind of dirty pinky and yellow, yellow as the pink plaster is coming off the wall. El thinks it is really more terracotta than pink anyway! We walked around for a bit and found one of the sights which is unique to Jaipur, the "Jantar Mantar" an observatory began by Jai Singh in 1728, which holds one of the largest sundials in the world, the thing is massive. The guide showed us a small model which measures 3 seconds increments and the large one that does 2 seconds increments, to do 1 seconds they would have to build a instrument twice as big as the large one!, unless you see the large one you can't understand how cool this thing would be if some one built it. The place was used, and still is used, by astronomers to work out people's horoscope. As the instruments are used as teaching tools they are built in two parts so that the students and teachers can get into these massive devices and read the information, so each increment is like a jigsaw, if you placed one on top of the other you would get a whole.

The guide asked Eleanor's and my star sign and when he heard El's he turned to me and said:

"this is trouble for you, yes!, she is very intelligent, yes I am right!, you not say no, yes"

I had to agree that yes she is very intelligent and yes I don't say no very often (apart when I am being strong and manly of course, or when I'm right (not often)), and yes you are quite right it was big trouble for me!!

I overheard another guide telling his group that the last time he got his horoscope was before his marriage. In India no one gets married unless the stars tells them that it's a good date, which gave me the idea that it would be fun to get El's and mine done before we leave, watch this space!


I took pity on the cycle rickshaw guy and showed him how to do it!, ended up with some other travelers doing the same, trying to race me... the fools!