The Pink City of Jaipur, Rajasthan

We have travelled across to Jaipur in Rajasthan. This is the area that we will spend most time. The Mogul Empire was the richest in the world and ruled for about 850 years before the British arrived.

Jaipur is a very interesting place. It is called the Pink city and the buildings of the old city are all painted in a dark pink colour We arrived after a long drive and checked into our hotel. Again excellent! We went to the famous Raj Mandir cinema with its meringue shaped auditorium. It had a huge area to congregate and we sat through the first half of a Bollywood movie. It was situated in Paris and had a dialogue in Hindi, French and English. We had little trouble following it!

The next day was a very full one. We had an early start at The Amber Fort as we rode from the entry to the upper level on an elephant. We have some great prints of this that locals had for us by the time we reached the top! For now a few shots of our elephants.

                             The elephants arrive at the top. We had climbed up higher by this stage!


The Amber Fort is a wonderful site. The elaborate buildings with intricate patterns carved into the marble. There were rooms that served similar functions to castles in Europe as it is more than a fort and is a Royal Palace as well as a defensive fort.

                                      Rob at the gardens. It was a beautiful place to visit.

              The walls and ceilings were highly decorated and the marble carvings exquisite.

                                            Looking down over the gardens and buildings.

                                                           We loved this place!

We moved on with a brief stop to see the Lake Palace and then visited a handicraft centre with high quality goods.  We watched a demonstration of woodblock printing on fabric which was fascinating to see the intricacy and accuracy required to produce a woodblock print in multiple colours,  We bought a few small woodblocks and later a larger one - perhaps we could try going into production ourselves.  This place had very high quality goods on sale - napery, wooden articles, marble tables and of course silk carpets.  The prices matched the quality.  We enjoyed delicious snacks while we browsed.

                                                    Rob and Gail at The Lake Palace.

                                        Rob checking out the woodblocks.
Next we visited the fascinating 18th century Jantar Mantar Observatory with its collection of astronomical and astrological instruments.  It was quite amazing to see the accuracy of the sundials, one of which was told the time within 20 seconds and one which told the time within 2 seconds.  We were able to read it off ourselves!  There were also instruments relating to the astrology signs because in Indian culture, astrology plays an important role in a person's life.

                          The two sun dials. The large one at the back is the world's largest!

Our final stop was the opulent city palace, a former royal residence and now a grand museum with an extraordinary collection of paintings, costumes and armoury.

As this had not been enough for 1 day, we went out to a special dinner where we were entertained by performers in traditional attire while we ate and afterwards saw a puppet show with a modern twist on Rajasthan culture.  It had been a great day.