Jaipur

Hawa Mahal

Jaipur is known as the Pink City because all of the buildings in the old downtown area were painted pink – a color that signifies welcoming guests in Hinduism – by the former Maharaja on the occasion of Prince Albert’s visit. Jaipur is also known for its many palaces and for being one of India’s first (and only) master-planned cities. Hundreds of years ago, the Maharaja planned the city on a grid system and built wide streets (so wide that they handle the heavy traffic well today – and are wider than most streets in any of the other cities we visited).

One of our first stops was Hawa Mahal (Wind Palace). I was told it’s an engineering marvel because no pillars were used to build it. It faces a busy street and looks like a huge palace, but it’s actually just a façade. It was built so that the women of the royal court could look out the windows and watch the every-day city life go by. There’s nothing behind it but ramps that lead to all the screened-windows.

 We visited the Amber Fort and Palace – a huge complex built in 1592. At this point, I was pretty sure I had mastered all the details of palaces in India, but the Amber Palace is a little different because it was built with more Hindu influences than the previous palaces we had seen which were all built by Muslim rulers. The palace had numerous ingenious details such as water drainage systems, fountains, and sort of a pre-air conditioning cooling system. One room known as a Sheesh Mahal (Glass Palace) was added in 1639 and has intricate art work that featured glass, mirrors, and gem stones.

We stopped by the Lake Palace which was built as a summer residence. After it was built, a man-made lake was built around it and so the palace appears to be floating in the water. It’s only accessible by boat and is currently closed to tourists. Other sites we saw were the City Palace and Museum (which includes the palace where the current Maharaja lives), a fort that houses the world’s largest cannon on wheels (supposedly), and Jantar Mantar, a large space with numerous astronomical tools including a sun dial that tells the time within a two-second accuracy. There were a lot of other instruments there, but as much as I tried, I didn’t understand how any of them worked, but I definitely acted like I did.

On day 2 we headed back to New Delhi for our flight back to Bangalore. We got stuck in some legendary India traffic and the drive ended up taking 7 hours. As an added bonus, our flight was delayed for about 2 hours when we got to the airport. But the delay gave us plenty of time to reflect on our fast-paced golden triangle tour - which I think was a success given all that could have gone wrong.

Hawa Mahal

Elephant rides at the Amber Fort entrance

Ganesh post at Amber Palace entrance

Copying Euro tourists who were lined up taking pictures in this opening at Amber Palace

Detail of glass and mirror art at Sheesh Mahal

Amber Palace courtyard

Lake Palace

Jantar Mantar and world's largest sundial

World's largest canon on wheels (?); protects the Amber Palace and was only fired once during a test and supposedly the person who fired it died (???)

With a Rajasthani dancer at a touristy dinner-and-dance show