Jaipur, Day 5 of trip

Arrived in Jaipur for the sunrise, which seems to be a trend on this trip, and checked into a hotel for a few extra hours of much needed sleep. Once we had rejoined the world of the living we went out to see the city. Steffen had done a slow-motion-fall down the stairs the night before and now had an identical bandage on his big toe. I won’t even try to describe what a slow motion fall is, but it has been re-enacted numerous times on the trip now, basically anytime there is a soft surface for Steffen to fall on and re-enact it by popular demand, its a real crowd pleaser.

Had WONDERFUL samosas and Chai for breakfast, only 5 rupee each, (for perspective, 50 rupees is about 1 dollar). First we hit up the palace, which our guide told us not to go to because it was too expensive – typical rickshaw drive code for: let me take you somewhere else that will give me commission, but we went anyway and it was pretty spectacular. The whole city is pink by regulation, so its pretty sweet. The current Raja still lives there with his family, but to tour this part of the building it is 2,500 rupees, or about 50 dollars, US so we decided to pass. There is one very interesting courtyard with four different doors representing the four different seasons, where many Bollywood movies have been filmed.





Afterwards we went to another building we could see from the palace, which was the Hawa-Mahil, or palace of the wind. This was really cool and gave incredible views out over the city. The original city was planned into 9 different blocks, but today it has spilled far beyond the original plan.


We went for lunch at a normal street restaurant and after headed up to the fort for sunset, singing Beijing Hunangning ni the whole way up. By this point our rickshaw driver was getting very upset that we were going nowhere that he would get commission.


The fort was also incredible and you could wander around at will, which was very cool. There were monkeys everywhere and we also had a large group of boys acting like monkeys fighting for the opportunity to pose in pictures with us. We stayed for the sunset and then got in our rickshaw and went back to the city to get oil massages, which were a ‘different’ experience, especially for Steffen, who I think felt quite violated.