Jaipur

After Agra, we headed to Jaipur, the 3rd city in the so-called ‘tourist triangle’ (Delhi, Agra and Jaipur). Jaipur is called the Amber or Red City. Most of the old buildings are painted red.

Unfortunately, the morning of our travel day to Jaipur, our son was struck down with Delhi Belly and almost didn’t make the car trip. The next day, our daughter and I were also struck down. This meant that we spent the next 3 days in the apartment. (Thank god we got a serviced apartment for Jaipur and not a hotel or homestay!). We had originally only planned on spending 4 days, so we extended our stay by another 4 days so that we could actually see something of Jaipur other than our apartment…

On the fourth day, we tried to venture out, but that ended with us having to literally drag our daughter around and her sitting anywhere on the ground she could (pee, garbage, etc.) because she became so unwell about an hour after we went out.

Old city and Hawa Mahal

We did however, manage to see the famous Hawa Mahal facade that day (before she got sick), and we managed to see the inside courtyard too, and some of the old city while we walked around trying to find an Uber pick-up spot. But, unfortunately, we had to miss the city palace and the Jantar Mantar observatory. Here are some scenes from the old city and Hawa Mahal.

In India, there seem to be celebrations and music everywhere. We had a wedding at the house across the street from our apartment the night before, and when we went to the Hawa Mahal, the tickets were free due to some festival and there was music playing in the courtyard and people dancing.

Amber Fort

The next day we went to the far northern end of town to visit the Amber Fort. It was a pretty impressive structure. There are actually 2 forts and a palace in the complex. The second fort is connected to the first fort by a series of tunnels spanning the 3 km length. You can walk from one fort to the other, but after we saw the first fort, we decided that we didn’t need to take the extra 6 km walk to see the second one.

The fort is up a hill and you can choose to walk up or ride an elephant. Obviously, we chose to walk since we are too aware of elephant treatment for tourism around the world.

Stepwell

After the fort, we wandered around town and visited the local stepwell. The bottom of the stepwell looked like something a witch would brew up. There were flapping eels and several turtles swimming around the green gunk and trash.

Jal Mahal

The Jal Mahal is a small palace in the center of a lake. You can’t visit it, because it has been purchased by a billionaire who is renovating it with plans to turn it into a hotel. There is a nice promenade along the lake with good views of the palace.

Gaitor Ki Chhatriyan (Maharaja mausoleums)

This is a place that seems to be a bit off the normal tourist track, but it was really beautiful! I highly recommend anyone visiting Jaipur to check it out. It is the resting place for the various Jaipur ruling family.

Next stop Ranthambore National Park

We’re on our way to Ranthambore to hopefully see some Bengal tigers. We decided to continue our game of counting random cows walking down the road. The ‘Cow Count’ for this leg was: 637 cows (and 26 camels pulling carts).

Here are some scenes from the trip: