Jaipur Sightseeing

Out with Ashok before 9 this morning for some sightseeing with a local guide, Sunny, who we met in front of Palace of The Winds, known in the native language as Hawa Mahal.

It is built from red and pink sandstone in 1799 and is considered unique due to its small windows and balconies. The intent of the building was to allow royal ladies to observe everyday life and festivals without being seen.

Lonely Planet use a picture of the building on the front cover of its most recent India Guidebook

Then it was off to see the Amber Fort which has the third longest walls in the world surrounding it. It sits up on the side of a hill on the outskirts of Jaipur and is accessible by either foot, vehicle or elephant

Amber Fort

Built around 1592 of sandstone and marble

We approached the fort firstly in the car but as that got slowed in a queue of cars going up the only road to the upper carpark we finished off the journey on foot - if we had realised how step the upper part was we might have not chosen to do so.

As one would expect a monument such as this has many tales to tell and today Sunny told those stories 

While everything about the fort was worth seeing there was one area which stood out - an area where inlayed pieces of glass shimmer in the sunlight

After a good 1.5hrs we returned to the car and went to Jantar Mantar, an early 18th century UNESCO world heritage site, being an exhibition of early instruments used to “tell the time” some of which are the largest of their type ever built. As well as instruments we regard as sundials there were others that allowed the astronomical position of the sun to be calculated.

It is difficult to conceive how someone designed these instruments to tell the time with such precision- we tested the large sundial against the time shown on my iPhone and it was remarkably accurate

The largest “sundial”

Our time with Sunny was over so we returned to the hotel for lunch before venturing out by ourselves as Ashok had the afternoon off.

We, with some trepidation, took the metro down to the old town and wandered among the hordes of locals ( we only saw one other white faced couple) who were haggling with storekeepers over any manner of things - it was a very chaotic, pushy scene.

It would seem that some younger girls don’t get to see non-Indians very often because as we idled down the bazaar a couple of girls asked Sherry if they could have a photo with her. 

PS. Apologies for change of font size through post but IT seems to have a mind of its own!!!