Wonderful Jaipur

Jaipur is a wonderful city, probably my favourite of all the places I visited during my trip.

Jaipur was founded in 1727 by, (and named after) Jai Singh II, whose family had ruled a sizeable part of northern Rajasthan. The old 'Pink City' in the clip above is the heart of Jai Singh's old city and a marvel of town planning. The striking grid-plan layout boasts wide, dead straight streets, laid out at right angles and broadening to spacious plazas at major intersections. The design was created in accordance with the Vistu Shastras, a series of ancient Hindu architectural treatises, whereby the entire layout can be read as a kind of mandala, or sacred diagram, in which the city becomes a devinely ordained element of the overreaching cosmic design. Old Jaipur is a walled city, surrounded by walls and imposing gateways.

I've heard 2 explanations for the 'Pink City' title. One is that it was painted Pink as a welcome for the Prince of Wales who visited India in 1870. The other is that the Pink colour was used to disguise the poor quality materials used, and was a feature of the original design. Not sure .....

I absolutely loved the Pink City. It was wonderful to stroll around the streets and see the very colourful bazaar. It's extremely local, where the people buy vegetables and spices as well as hand painted silk scarves and all sorts of goodies. It's not at all touristy .. wonderful.


In the morning, we went to the Amber Fort and Palace. The tour started by elephant ! My elephant was called Champah. There are 100 elephants on duty every day to take the tourists up to the palace. It's quite a steep pathway up for the elephants and very narrow. There was quite a traffic jam along the way !

The Amber Palace is a magnificent complex, hugely ornate, particularly the Hall of Mirrors where the original walls, ballustrades and ceilings are wonderfully preserved and still look fresh and new.

The Amber Palace was initiated by Raja Man Singh I, who was a brilliant general and Commander in Chief of the Mugul army. He was regarded as one of the nine gems of Akabar's court. Amber had been the capital of the Kachawa kings from 1036 to 1727, when the new town of Jaipur was built, by Jai Singh II.

Here's some of the scenes from the Palace tour.





After the Palace, we went to see the Jantak Mantar, the Observatory. This is an amazing place, built by Jai Singh II. He was something of a mathematician and an astromoner and designed many of the instruments himself. Amazingly, the instruments (built between 1728 and 1734) still work !! I was fascinated by the small sun dial, pictured here. You read the time from the shadow. The line on the left of the shadow is the 11am line, and the shadow falls one notch before the Quarter hour .. i.e. 11.14 am. Now the blue sign above tells you that because true Jaipur time is actually 31 minutes behind Indian time, you need to add on 31 minutes .. that makes it 11.45 am. I looked at my watch and it showed exactly 11.45 am .. amazing for a 350 + year old instrument.

The Observatory is directly opposite the City Palace, where the royal family still have a residence. We went to see the parts that are open to the public. It houses a museum showing artifacts of the life of the royal family, after they moved down to Jaipur from Amber.

The City Palace has a gate which opens onto the main street of the Pink City. This gate is just used by the Royal family. Afterwards while I was strolling around the bazaar, I hear people say that the Maharaja was arriving and I could see a lot of fuss around the gate. I expected an elephant or a camel .. or at least gold carriage. I was very disappointed to see a black limousine with dark windows ! No pomp and ceremony at all !!