Jaipur

Once in Jaipur I had a guess that I would not like Delhi because of how busy Jaipur was and Delhi was only bound to be worse! I finally saw stop lights though! We went though the whole town to go to Amber Fort (and then some!).

Between Amber Fort and Jaipur Mantar (well, Amber Fort and Jaipur town) there is Jal Mahal which looks like a floating palace.

I then went to Jaipur Mantar which I didn’t like too much. Like Derek Freal said about the terracotta warriors, it seems like things from everywhere were put into one area and made to look like they belonged there! Why would all of those have been together anyway? The king would have had about 20 different ways to tell time? Was that necessary? I could hardly understand the descriptions because of how hot it was and how technical they were. The main one was pretty amazing because of sheer size and I wish I could have gone to the top of it, but I’m sure if it was open there would be a huge line.

City Palace is right next to Jaipur Mantar.

Next was Hawa Mahal which I thought I could go inside of or at least behind but I guess not. It was a facade for women to go behind and sit in to watch parades and such as they could not be seen, so I thought tourists would be able to do the same and see what they saw. I guess not. Maybe it has fallen apart a lot as it was being held up by sticks.

A boy took me to the top of a building across the street and tried to get me to go into everyone’s shop on the way back down, but nope! He said it was free!

That night I went to the Holi Festival.

I can’t begin to describe how fun Holi is.

After this I went to Elefantastic.

City Palace

City Palace is right next to Jaipur Mantar and was beautiful when you really got into the second part.

The first just seems to hold a museum for clothing (where you cannot take pictures). The end of the museum has info about pong (or at least the first playing cards which were circles), polo and chess and how Indian basically invented all of them! And here I thought England did polo and had no idea for the rest of them. India also invented night polo which is/was played with a metal (at first wooden) ball with a candle in the middle that could rotate so it never fell out or upside down, killing the flame.

There was a performance outside as well.

Into the main hall was a dignitary room (off to the right) where the Indian government welcomed famous people.

There was another performance going on outside of that as well! I liked this one more.

To the left were some famous polo paintings/drawings (who I remembered reading about in the museum) and if you go all the way though it seems like a restaurant that had been taken apart…I was pretty confused so went back to the main part.

There were also come carriages right before the exit.