On our trip to Jaipur, we stopped at the Chand Baori step well. You may recall that we visited a step well in Delhi. This could not have been more different. The one in Delhi was cool but this was astounding. This was in a little village in Rajastan called Abhaneri.  The first 10 days of October is festival time for celebrating the Mother Goddess, Durga, and the festival is called Navratri. So we have been seeing all kinds of decorated trucks and people parading down the streets. When we arrived in Abhaneri, we were greeted by this:

Apparently the government of Rajastan, gives money to each and every little town for their celebrations. We were offered the flower necklaces as we went in and asked to return them on the way out. When we got back on the bus, Sandeeph told us that the government had paid for those flowers and the guy who asked for the flowers back would try to sell them and that was wrong. So he called the guy on it and a few of our group who had not given the flowers back, tried to give them back later and he refused to take them.

The Chand Baori step well was built sometime between 800 and 900AD. The design reminded us of an M.C. Escher painting. They are in the midst of restoring some of the outer buildings but the Mughals while ruling India, who are Muslim, defaced all their statues. Muslims do not paint or sculpt living things in their buildings and Hindus do. It was very sad to see so many beautiful works of art destroyed.

Our lunch stop as a fairly forgettable restaurant greeted us with this:

We arrived in Jaipur mid-afternoon which was the first planned city in India and built beginning in the 1600’s. The streets are wide and at right angles and organized. Jaipur is one of the cleaner cities we have seen, at least in the downtown area. We headed to the Raj Madir Cinema, the oldest movie house in Jaipur, from about 1917. They just don’t build them like this anymore.

We sat down to watch M.S. Dohni, a movie about a very famous cricketer of India. The movie was in Hindi with no subtitles; we missed some of the details but got the basic gist. We stayed for about 1/3 of the 3 hour movie. It was good and we plan on trying to watch it in English when we get home. Then to the oldest Lassi café in Jaipur. Lassi is basically a yogurt smoothie. Here they are served in disposable un-glazed ceramic cups. (Of course, I am going to try to transport ours home!) The lassi was delicious!

Bapu Bazaar is a few blocks of small shops, every other shop selling the same thing. Many people on our tour loved it and bought a lot. We found it highly unpleasant because of the aggressiveness of the shop keepers. We headed back to the bus after about 15 minutes…just not our style.

The Amber Fort is amazing! This is about the 4^th fort we have seen and they are all so different. The only thing they seem to have in common is the defense of a very small entrance and winding streets at the beginning. Unlike the fort in Jaiselmar, no one lives in this fort. The Maharaja and his 12 wives and 365 concubines were the only occupants of the buildings. The decorative details are fantastic. They hung metal chains as curtains and the  water would run down the chains, evaporating as it went which cooled off their rooms. The use of mica for insulation and mirrors for reflecting the lights of the lanterns was not only practical but beautiful. The wall of the fort runs across the hills for 10 miles!

We had to switch from the bus to Jeeps because the bus could not fit in the fort. The walk back to the jeeps was a maze of hawkers selling their wares was mind-blowing. I was interested in this one wooden elephant but his price was ridiculous. He followed me to the Jeep, all the while his price going down with me not having to say a word. I found some bracelets I liked and got him down quite a bit. A man with some brass bowls was standing there and wanted 1000 rupees. I showed him the 100 rupees I had just gotten as change from the bracelets. He said no way so I continued walking. He also followed me to the Jeep and as I got on the Jeep, he came down to 100 rupees and I bought it. (This is ‘normal’ negotiation and the hawkers almost seem insulted if you don’t haggle!)

So we headed back and transferred to the bus and headed for our elephant ride. Normally the elephant ride is in the fort but they could not do it because of the festival. It was about a 15 minute bus ride. When we pull up, I look out the window and there is the guy with the wooden elephants knocking on my window! Remember me, he says!!!??? It gets even better. They took our picture on the elephant and we left before the photographer had a chance to sell them to us (we didn’t want them anyways!) and when we pulled up to the Observatory (after driving somewhere and eating lunch and then driving to the Observatory) there knocking on my window was the guy with our elephant pictures!! They are persistent folks!!

The Jantar Mantar Observatory was phenomenal! It had started raining during lunch and it was still sprinkling when we got there so we could not use our “whispers” which are small receivers with an earpiece so we can hear the guide without him shouting. Between that and the continued rain, it was a much shorter visit than we wanted. Built in the early 1700’s, is a collection of nineteen architectural astronomical instruments, measuring time, predicting eclipses, ascertaining the declination of plants, distance to plants and stars, longitude and latitude of planets….and on and on. Wow…remember this was 1734. Unfreakingbelievable!

We also toured the City Palace which is really not much compared to the palaces we have seen but they did have a nice textile museum. The City Palace is the only remaining palace where a Maharaja still lives and actually he drove right past us!

The silver urn is supposedly in the Guinness Book for largest vessel. Some rich dead guy used it to haul water from the Ganges with him wherever he went!

Pooped again….we start at 8:00am and are done by about 5:30 or 6pm. Time to get back to the room and take a much needed shower, get some dinner, work on the blog and planning for Vietnam and Cambodia, and some sleep, getting ready to do it all again tomorrow.