Change In Plans

Jaipur - Rajasthan - India

This post is about our second action-packed day in Jaipur.  We rode more elephants, toured the famous Amber Fort, saw a lot of sights, went for a walk in the old city, and had dinner with a local family.  We are keeping busy for sure.

We were out the door by 8am today, in order to get to the Amber Fort in time to get another elephant ride. Starting at about 7:30 am, taking an elephant up the long hill to the fort is the only way to arrive in style.  We waited in line for about 45 minutes, and were among the last tourists to actually get on elephants.  They stop the parade at 10 am, because the road is too hot for the elephants’ feet.  Several hundred people were sent away without being able to ride.

The Amber Fort is yellow in color, but the name comes from the Sanskrit word for “high.”  It is the traditional home and center of power of the kings (maharajahs) of Jaipur.  Construction on the fort began in 966 AD, and continued in fits and starts until about 1700.  It is a massive and sprawling, almost organic, set of structures, perched about 400 feet above the valley on a hillside, and surrounded by two huge perimeter walls.

Our elephants set us down in the midst of the daily carnival in the huge courtyard below the living areas.  There were dozens of musicians, snake charmers, food and drink sellers (we chose to pass on that) and people selling t-shirts and souvenirs.  As we are finding in many places in India, several people asked to take pictures of themselves with Tallulah.

We walked up two sets of broad stairs and into the palace area.  The main gate is a large rectangular hole in the inner walls, which becomes a short passageway.  The passageway turns 90 degrees to the left before reaching the stout wooden doors.  This design prevented invaders from charging the doors with their elephants, because apparently the elephants have difficulty making the hard left turn at speed.

The interior spaces of the palace are spectacular beyond words.  One room has thousands (tens of thousands?) of small convex mirrors embedded into the patterns decorating the walls.  At night, a single candle is reflected and fragmented into shimmering starlight.  Thick stone screens, looking out onto the valley below, are carved into beautiful repetitious patterns of stars and triangles.  The enormous gardens are laid out in a pattern which matches the stone screens.  Once we left the courtyards, we found a warren of small rooms and connecting passageways and stairs.  It would be easy to get lost.  

IN 1727, after three generations of having no successful attacks on the Amber Fort, the maharajah decided that the inconvenience of living (mostly the difficulty of getting water) on the mountainside was too great for his court, and they built the planned city of Jaipur down on the valley floor.  Old Jaipur, the Pink City, is laid out as a perfect rectangular grid, about two kilometers by one kilometer.  All in, the city walls contain about 400 acres.  The main road is exactly 110 feet wide, and as straight as a ruler’s edge.  The grid is full of precise right angles.  

The city’s buildings are uniformly three stories, and were painted pink, by royal decree, in advance of Prince Albert’s visit from England in 1876.  Since then, by law, every other years every property owner must apply a coat of pink paint.  Unfortunately, many of the buildings don’t look as though they get much maintenance aside from the paint.  The battered and crumbling facades, combined with the crowded chaos spilling into the wide streets, creates a strong image of faded glory.  The few restored buildings (like the Palace of Winds) are magnificent, and further highlight the sad shabbiness of the others.

After visiting the maharajah’s celestial observatory (world’s largest sun dial, keeping accurate time within 20 seconds) and touring the City Palace museum, we went for a walk on the main road.  Again, like our trip through the market streets of Old Delhi, it was an overwhelming but exhilarating experience.  There were so many people walking, pedaling, scooter driving, and driving past us.  Small shops and food stalls extended their wares and their staff out over the rough sidewalks and into the roadway.  It was loud, and smoky, and frenetic in the pace of its activity.  If there were any doubt that we had arrived in India, the walk made it clear for all four of us: India coming at you.

We are staying one more night in Jaipur, leaving to drive to Pushkar, and the famous camel festival, in the morning.  I can’t understand why I did not make a trip to India until I was 42 years old.  This is perhaps the most exciting and spectacular place I have ever been.

Jaipur - Rajasthan - India

This short post is about the trip from Delhi down to Jaipur, and about our first day here.  The events and images are coming at us so quickly that it is difficult to capture and convey them.  Nothing prepared us for the overwhelming sensory assault of our first trip to India.

Jaipur is a city of over 3 million people, and is the capital of the state of Rajasthan.  We flew down from Delhi early yesterday  morning.  On the airplane, I was surprised to see that the total distance is only 250 kilometers (flying time of 16 minutes).  Apparently the road is so narrow and crowded that it could easily take 7-9 hours (!) to drive. This is between the nation’s capital its nearest big-city neighbor, across a relatively new road on flat and dry terrain. The government’s recent emphasis on developing road infrastructure seems like a good idea.

We are staying at a truly spectacular, off-the-charts hotel called the Rambagh Palace.  One of the Rajasthani queens built it originally for her wet nurse in the 19th century.  It is just down the hill, within easy viewing distance, from the main palace.  It was converted into a grand hotel in 1957.  

Rambagh Palace in Jaipur - spectacular hotel

Grand is an insufficient word to describe the graceful scalloped arches and the shiny pink and white marble floors.  The ceilings are 20 feet high, and every room is finished in dark hardwoods and brass.  The grounds are vast, and closely manicured.  Even the breakfast room is decorated with intricate white marble carvings in concentric arches over the doors and windows.  Zola, who loves grand hotels, and is generally pretty articulate, summed it up for all of us with: “Wow!” 

The staff greeted us with flower necklaces made from chrysanthemums, and by daubing each of our heads with a red dot. The whole effect was transporting.  We felt as though we were visiting an era of colonial privilege and 19th-century style.

Yesterday afternoon we went to an elephant camp in the foothills about 40 minutes from the center of Jaipur, to watch an elephant polo exhibition.  At the gate, we were greeted by six elephants with brightly colored saddles and paint on their faces and trunks.  The kids got to feed them bananas, and we were showered with flower petals from the mahouts who rode the elephants.  A 15-man military bagpipe and drum band, fully kitted in tartan kilts and long capes, played an accompaniment as we walked in.  We discovered that we were the only guests. 

The camp and polo grounds were very elegant, again looking like a British officers’ club from the late 19th century.  Two teams of two elephants each (plus a mounted referee) took the field, and played for about 15 minutes.  None of us had ever seen polo on horses, much less on elephants, so this was great novelty.  Basically the mahouts drive the elephants around the hockey-rink sized pitch at a trot, and the players whack away at a kids’ soccer ball with very long polo mallets.

Suddenly, the game stopped, and it was our turn to take the field.  Team Yellow was Tallulah and me on one elephant, and India on another.  Team Blue was Zola alone with a mahout on one elephant, and Indrajit, our guide, on another.  I don’t think we were very good, but we played a full-bore 2-on-2 elephant polo match for about 45 minutes.  Tallulah got tired, and went to sit in grand style with the referee on his elephant, where she could throw the ball in after each goal.  Team Yellow emerged victorious, by the score of 9 to 5, in large part because my elephant had been trained to trot a little faster than the others.  When we got down, we all laughed for a long time at the splendor and absurdity of it all.

The elephants and the bagpipers did a twice-round-the-field procession, after which I was instructed to present the commander of the bagpipe unit with a bottle of dark rum.  Apparently this is long-standing tradition with Indian bagpipers.

Finally, we had dinner out by a roaring campfire (by then, other guests had joined), and we watched traditional bhangra dancing.  The dancers whirled and swirled, their long skirts flowing and their mirrored fabrics glittering in the firelight.  The music and the dancing (and the fire eater performance) were again transporting.

Eventually both kids were asleep, and we had to drive back to the hotel.  

At this point, all four of us are absolutely blown away with the beauty, the culture, the history, the coolness of India.