It was good advice.
Anyway, nice bus ride, we count the stops but it is difficult to know exactly where the city starts and the bus has already stopped a few times and then the bus driver comes up to us and another foreign couple and says this is the city centre (our stop) and him being the bus driver and not some random person we assumed he would not mislead us. :) Well he did! Our hotel owner said its a popular scam, the bus driver gets a commission from the taxi drivers to get people off further from their hotel. It was no big deal,pretty funny actually,just one of the many things to keep you on your toes in India! And the nice guy at the hotel had a rickshaw to get us in no time.
As a whole Jaipur is such a nice change from Delhi. The old town,which is called the pink city as all the buildings are painted pink(albeit a very worn pink) was a little hectic but still no Delhi.
However,the more modern Jaipur is little more relaxed.
We were supposed have a chill day today but somehow we talked ourselves into checking out a few sites.Its so hard not to when you arrive somewhere new. The feeling of being somewhere unfamiliar always seems to beckon us out the door no matter how tired we may be and so we decided on just three destinations. (with Indian transport issues that translates to 8 hours!) :)
We started in the pink city (old city)which was painted pink in
1876 by Maharaja Ram Singh to welcome the Prince of
Wales (who later became King Edward the VII)
We started at the Maharaja's
Palace( also known as the city palace) which was a charming site. Admittedly after seeing the Taj yesterday I had to put effort into giving the palace a fair objective chance. It was quite beautiful, with red sand stone and Mughal detail.
It was built in 1729 and is still the royal residence today. The last Maharaja died in 2011 and though I have inquired I have not yet got a straight answer to who the next to throne is.(apparently there is a grandson only?)
We then moved on to what was a fabulous site and one I found more architecturally interesting. The Hawa Mahal (or palace of the winds) is a palace that was built in 1799 with 953 small windows over a front facade shaped as a giant crown. The windows are dressed with intricate lattice and the building was built for royal women they could watch life on the streets while still obeying the strict "purdah"(face cover).
It is quite a site both looking up from the street and climbing up and peeking through the many windows. It was a very visually stimulating building but it being a Sunday today it was quite packed ( like the words "fire hazard" come to mind as you walk in!)
There were tunneled passages up to the top and it was seriously just a massive mob slowly pushing up floor by floor. And of course the photo requests. Indian people are so sweet when they ask and being a guest in their country it is hard to say no so we did take photos with a few people
and then had to politely decline as especially in crowds if we agree with one person 25 more came up.
We then moved on to my highlight of the day! The Monkey Temple!
It's actually called Galtaji and is an
ancient Hindu pilgrimage from the early 1500's and then had temples added in the 1800's.
It was about a 15 minute rickshaw out of the city and 35 minute walk up the mountain to the temple. I think due to its location it isn't popular with tourists as we only saw one other foreign couple our whole time there. Actually, there weren't even many Indian people around. It was actually quite peaceful and having been basically forced to take rickshaws everywhere(or we would be lost!) it was so nice to do some hiking and not hear honking horns.
We did however come across a snake charmer which was actually pretty cool! He had a python in a large clay pot with its head just hovering about almost as if it wasn't real but a stuffed toy, but it was! Niki was not overly impressed with the fact that I wanted a photo with this guy and his pet but it was too cool to pass up!
So, were walking up this dusty cobblestoned path just us and the peace of nature(with the odd hindu holy man with his face painted I can only assume doing a pilgrimage)
However, though there were few people there were an explosive amount of monkeys! It was absolutely unreal! And every step we took we saw more, walking beside us, in front of us, swinging by us. It was mesmerizing!
They had no fear of people and we found out why, many of the holy men we saw doing their pilgrimage also carried bags of Naan bread and would walk letting the monkeys grab the
bread right out of their hands.
And as if this wasn't surreal enough our winding mountain walk ends in a series of temples that could only be described as a "temple town". The main inhabitants? You guessed it,monkeys! Yes there were some people here and there but monkeys everywhere! I know I have used this analogy before in my blogs but it just felt like I was in an Indiana Jones film.
Just standing in one place looking at these temples(which in their own right were marvelous with the mountain backdrop) with the sun going down and monkeys walking, running,
swinging and even swimming in holy pools built form the temples, was just something out of fiction.
We did also venture into a couple temples, one of which a holy man blessed our marriage with markings on our foreheads and bracelets. It was a fascinating experience and one I never forget.
I did add a few video's as well as I want sure if words alone would do it justice.
We returned home to have a delightful meal in our hotel and enjoyed a wonderful conversation with some other travelers,Gary and Kristan a couple from Belgium and Lies, a fellow from Algeria. They all had fantastic advice on some possible destinations after India and were just nice people all around. I think it was therapeutic for
all of us to exchange stories and perspectives on a country that offers so much challenge but with so much reward.
Off to bed, peace all.
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