Jaipur, India

Jaipur, called the Pink City because it was once painted pink for a royal visit, is an ancient city with beautiful gates and palaces and it has a distinctive look about it even in the streets and market places of Old Town. But what most everyone comes to see is the Amber Fort. Here’s some of the city first.

The many windows on this palace were designed so that the royal women could observe local life and festivals without themselves being seen.

The way up the hill to Amber Palace Fort was crazy. We thought we’d never get there through all that traffic on the narrow road where over 5000 visitors a day are jostling for a place! The palace was constructed out of yellow and pink sandstone and white marble in 1592 on the remains of an 11th century fort and consists of an extensive palace complex (and it is complex! with its myriad stairs and passageways it would be so easy to get lost for good), gardens, a lake, and about 12 km of walls.

This step well is one of not very many left in India. One could walk down into the well — if one didn’t need handrails — and get cooler in the process.

The mirror palace is one of the most interesting parts of the fort with thousands of small mirrors in intricate designs.

I really enjoyed this fort and palace the scope of which is hard to envision as we spent hours here and saw just a tiny part of it.

Driving through the city we came next to the Jantar Mantar Observatory which was built by Sawai Jai Singh II in the 18th century and is the largest stone and marble crafted observatory in the world, having 17 large instruments, many of them still in working condition. The guide explained how some of them worked and showed us the time on the worlds largest sundial.

The ticket office at the observatory was typical in that there is no line; whoever pushes the best gets the ticket first.

This sundial doesn’t look like most you may have seen but it works perfectly.

We enjoyed the rest of Jaipur, did some shopping (not me but the other people :)) and enjoyed another great Indian meal. Dale and I enjoyed the Indian food but some of the group definitely did not; we both felt the effects of it later, however. Delhi belly is a real thing!

It was hard for us to comprehend why anyone would want to buy food and feed pigeons but it is very common all over India.

We turned in early, as we were prone to do after very full days, so that we could get up early and start for the tiger reserve.