Breakfast at a very repectable 8am was a very nice change from the early starts we have been having. We went down for breakfast, and were given a glass of Champagne to go with our meal. What a way to start your day.
We met our guide and Munji, our driver, at 9am and headed out for a day of sight seeing. First we started at the City Palace, in the centre of town. The Royal Family still lives in part of the Palace, and the rest is open to the public as a museum and it traces the history of the Palace and its occupants from 1720, when it was built up until the 1950’s when the Maharaja handed power over to the central government (for a handsome fee). There are many lavish rooms and displays of their clothing through the ages.
From there we walked (in the same compound, to the Jantar Mantar, an amazing collection of Astronomical and time keeping devices. They have sun dials there that are accurate to within 2 seconds for Jaipur. The time given is “Real” Jaipur time, NOT Indian standard time, so it runs about 11 minutes slower than the Offical time. This is because it is worked out on the basis of Longitude. (See Wiki if you want more, 🙂 ). We even got our photos taken as we stood between our Star Sign chronometers, which were right next to each other!
Once we were finished being educated about how the Indians were (and are) the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet, (mmm lol, Greg found it difficult to listen to this guide as he gave tooo much detail!), we went off to do another typical Indian thing, Elephant riding. On our way to the elephant place, we passed several elephants being riden down the main highway, I think in the day we counted over 15 elephants out on the roads.
Now elephant riding may sound very exotic and indeed it is a very gentle and peaceful way to travel through the forest. You can just imagine what it was like to go out on safari on top of the creatures, riding high it would have been very easy to see the wildlife around you. All was going well until the elephant started doing “bushmans” every few minutes. The driver calls it “Elephant Water”, I’d call it elephant snot, and at times through our 30 minute ride, I could feel it running down my leg after it did a particulary accurate bushmans. But what can you do, you get a bit of warning but there is nowhere to hide!!! 🙂
After the ride, and after we had cleaned up a bit, we had lunch over looking the Elephant Polo field, and of course you must have a glass of Champagne with lunch. No games were on, so we just watched the other people pass by atop their elephants returning from their rides.
From there we went to the Amber Fort, a very famous fortress just 11km north of Jaipur. This fort has approximately 9km of huge stone walls surrounding it and is a very impressive structure on the skyline. The Fort was build by the Mohgols and has a mix of architectural styles throughout it, with some areas of very ornate stonework, and decorations, particularly in the areas reserved for the Royals. There were several beautiful gardens within the Fort and next to it was a large manmade lake, contructed to provide water for the Fort.
On the way back we passed by the Lake Palace, a Palace built in the middle of a Lake. Well, the Palace was built in the middle of a valley, then a dam was built and the valley flooded, so that the Palace was out in the middle of the water, safe and secure.
It has been a fairly warm day today, so we decided to take the afternoon off and relax around our own Palace.
At 5:30 we took the Palace tour, it was facinating to get a full history of the place we are staying in, I find it amusing that the Maharajah who last fully occupied this Palace called his 3rd wife “The Most Beautiful Wife”, and that is the name all the staff here refer to her as. He married, or was married to, his first two wives when he was 2 and about 3, yes thats right, and they were older women, at least 15 years older or so. He had children by these two wives by the time he was about 13. The palace has been host to many famous people over the years, including QE II, Jackie Kennedy and many more. There is a photo of QE II taken after a Tiger Safari, in front of a dead tiger, very unPC these days. Our tour concluded in the Polo Bar with canapes and a glass of Champagne, our third for the day. 🙂
We then had dinner outside on the terrace and watched a performance by 4 Indian dancers and a 4 piece Indian band, it was very interesting and entertaining. Following dinner we both had our palms read. The “Reader” got both of us very well, and made some interesting predictions for our future. 🙂
Some Indian idiosyncrasies
At breakfast this morning there were 7 waiters for the 7 guests in the restaurant, and it seemed that when a few more guests came in a few more staff arrived
When ladies sit at a dining table with a handbag, a small stool magically appears for the handbag to sit on, you couldn’t possibly have it sitting on the floor!
Road Rules – these are merely suggestions rather than rules and actually maybe an indication of what you should not do on the roads! Traffic lights are for decoration only.
Cows, goats, water buffalo, dogs, camels and elephants all appear to have right of way, pedestrians don’t, or at least you just have to drive around them
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Loving the idea of a stool for my handbag!!