Tata India
Jaipur
Rupert writes
The Water Palace
We had a strange old time here. The friendly rickshaw driver from Agra had apparently called his friend who owned a nice sounding hotel in Jaipur, and arranged for us to be picked up from the bus station. It turned out that we’d been hooked up with another rickshaw driver, and a none-to-friendly one at that. After being taken to remote guesthouses not on our request list, we finally got him to drive us to the Evergreen Guesthouse, a Lonely Planet recommendation. It wasn’t great -bucket showers, flaking walls- but it had a decent enough restaurant and we were tired.
The exceedingly unkeen rickshaw driver picked us up later that day to take us to a temple where we would be able to watch the sunset. Sadly we were too late to snap more sunset photos, but got to witness the monkeys in their thousands swarming the place. Monkey mania! We stopped off at the water palace before heading back for the night (see photo above).
We agreed he’d pick us up the next morning for a half day tour of the city, but he never turned up. Thankfully. I think it was the lack of interest we had with making a detour to a clothes factory the evening before.
So we took a stroll and a few cycle-rickshaw rides around the city ourselves, seeing more of the real Jaipur than we could of from an auto-rickshaw I’m sure.
Lets play ‘count the monkey pictures’
The following pictures are of the Jantar Mantar, an observatory park with oversized instruments, begun by Jai Singh in 1728.
The largest sundial in the world, apparently. I can believe that. Accurate to an impressive two seconds. The picture above this one and on the right is from the top of this towering structure.
This instrument could tell you what star sign period we were in.
Tags: Agra, Australia, Darjeeling, Delhi, India, India, Jaipur, Taj Mahal, Travel
Monkey
Submit comment? Oh Laura , eat lots of good clean things as soon as you can, the jewel so cruel, love you both , mumki
And that was only the first time! 😉
Two weeks after that I was poisoned with a re-frozen ice-cream and then two weeks after that a gone off milk-shake. Lucky me!
Unfortunately Rupert didn’t escape too light either, some dodgy custard came and attacked him a few days ago. I’m looking after him though don’t worry – after all, I think its about my turn!
Hope all is well in France and wishing you all a Happy New Year.
All my love,
Laura x
*And Rupert in the background give a little wave*
OK… so you are really making me very envious now! What with the January blues and dark cold evenings – ummm really must get my travelling shoes on again!
Sounds so fab – really want to go to India now big time!
NY@NEC was good however very big and the sets not as good as hoped for. So we are all having a well earnt rest from partying at the mo.
Hugs always
Vanessa and Gary
You know, I’ve just noticed we don’t have a picture of Laura actually riding the camel. She did, honest (we do have photos, but apparently not good enough to share with everyone – so maybe one day when Laura’s not looking).