I left off the last blog on Saturday, me being stricken by a stomach bug that had laid me low the whole day. By Monday morning I was fairly convinced I was recovering, but over the course of the week the bug has come and gone (though never as badly as the first day). What’s more, Ellie caught what must have been the same thing and so, at various times in this week, we have had to take it easier than we might normally have done. Since some of the days have been a little less action packed, I will try and fit the whole of Jaipur into one blog covering a day of travelling and five full days in the city.

Also, due to popular demand, Ellie has written the entirety of Friday’s entry and hopefully will be taking at least a day per blog going forward!

Monday –

I woke up Monday still feeling quite weak but most of the nausea and stomach cramps had gone. We had a relatively early train leaving from Jodhpur that morning, but the manager at Singhvi had arranged for us to have a bite of breakfast before we left. A rickshaw was called for us to take us to the city’s train station, and we boarded the train right on time. We had booked a number of our journeys by train whilst in the UK and so erred on the side of caution and booked first class (which was still only about £20 each for an eight hour journey). We found our coach and our cabin, which consisted of four berths – two upper and two lower. A young lady who had boarded at the same time as us had the lower berth opposite. We had the berth above her and the other lower berth booked, but we shared the lower berth as it was plenty large enough for two to sit or even lie down. The upper berth above us remained unoccupied.

The journey was as smooth as we could have asked as the train pulled in and out of Rajasthani towns in the 300km or so of scrub-land between Jodhpur and Jaipur. Ellie slept for a lot of the journey as she was starting to feel a little viral by this point, and I wrote the Jodhpur blog and listened to an audiobook whilst the fairly featureless scenery passed by the window. An attendent put his head around the door at least ten times to ask if we wanted lunch and really couldn’t understand that we didn’t want to eat, and our tickets were checked once, but the rest of the time we were left to ourselves.

The train pulled in on time to Jaipur junction, and we alighted. The shrewd of the rickshaw drivers evidently knew to position themselves where the first class carraiges pulled in, and wait for the dazed looking white tourists. We were approached by a few which we turned down to give ourselves a second to orientate. One of the drivers hung back but stayed around, and when we looked up again he offered his rickshaw again, only for 150/- to the hotel. This was quite reasonable given we were a sitting duck and had heard that Jaipur rickshaws often quote outrageous prices. We agreed and he walked out of the station and to the rickshaw.

Our driver, a short, balding and friendly man who we later found was named Tiger, told us a little about Jaipur on the short drive. When we arrived, he gave us his whatsapp number and told us to get in touch if we needed to get around the city. Pearl Palace Hotel, our home for the next five days was in the C-scheme of Jaipur which was one of the most affluent areas in the city of 4 million. The hotel, strangely actually one of our cheaper stays, was spotlessly clean and well appointed, with a restaurant and cocktail bar on the roof that was well-renowned in Jaipur in its own right. We dropped our bags and headed to the restaurant as I was finally feeling hungry enough to eat some food. We shared a couple of small plates under the rooftop awning which sprayed a fine, cool mist to keep at bay some of the summer heat.

The rest of the day was relatively uneventful. Most of the time we stayed in the hotel room dozing or reading. I was still very tired from the excitement of the day before (even though I’d slept for about 80% of the last 48 hours) and Ellie continued to feel wiped from whatever it was we both had caught. We punctuated the evening by heading back upstairs for dinner, which was very good but did sit a bit uncomfortably on a recovering stomach. Before we went to bed, I messaged Tiger to arrange for him to pick us up from the hotel in the morning and take us to the major site of Jaipur, Amber Fort.

Tuesday –

We went up to the rooftop restaurant for breakfast, then headed down to meet Tiger outside the hotel. Sure enough he was waiting there, and he drove us the 30 minutes or so through the city and out over the surrounding barren hills to the Amber Fort. The fort was built by another of the Rajasthani rajputs, the capital of which was the city of Amer (a few km from Jaipur) at that time. A huge fort and palace was built half-way up the hill above Amer and called Amber fort and was the Maharaja and his entourages’ residency. I can’t find a good answer as to why it’s “Amber” fort and not “Amer” fort, but apparently it’s not because of the orange-red sandstone used to build it and a lot of the old city of Jaipur.

We arrived at the bottom of the fort, where who we thought was Tiger dropped us off. At this point, he asked me, “do you remember me?”. Thinking this a strange question, I said “yes, we met you yesterday.” He smiled, and revealed to us that he was actually not Tiger, but Baba (short for Iqbal), Tiger’s younger brother. I felt slightly guilty for not noticing as they didn’t look exactly the same, though given we spent the majority of the time looking at the back of his head in the rickshaw hopefully I can be excused. Baba explained that Tiger had a problem with his rickshaw, and so had sent him out instead. We agreed to meet Baba back at this spot in a few hours, and headed off into the Amber fort.

The walk up the fort’s entrance road was hot even in the mid-morning, and took us to the huge entrance courtyard. I will let the photos do most of the describing, but the fort itself was spectacular in its size and opulence. We bought our entrance tickets and audioguides, and spent the next couple of hours walking through the three main courtyards around which the palace was organised. There was a pillared open air plaza which was completely hidden behind stucco (now removed) to hide it from the Mughal’s soldiers come to destroy it as a lesson to the Maharaja. There were pleasure palaces cooled by streams of water running through channels in the floor or through a system of moistened curtains. The ramps to and from the upper levels had ridges to allow the royal ladies in their full formal regalia to be pushed on wheelchair (needed as they weren’t able to walk under the weight of the dresses) downstairs without “gathering uncontrollable speed”.

Once we had our full of the palace, we had a rest in the entrance courtyard in the shade and I walked the hot walk back down to the town to find some emergency Vaseline as the dry wind had chapped my lips almost instantenously. Once adaquately moistened, we debated the walk up to the top fort, Jaigarh Fort, which sat at the top of the hill beyond Amber Fort. Ellie had started to feel a little unwell by this point and I wasn’t fully better, but we both decided that we would start the walk up and we could always turn around if we didn’t fancy it. It wasn’t a inconsequential climb to the top, and it was nearly the heat of the day (around 36C).

We were accompanied by some wandering goats, the sacrificial slaughter of one we accidentally stumbled upon as we walked past a little guard’s outpost on the path, but otherwise the path was almost completely deserted. The fort perched at the top of the hill looked abandoned, so we were surprised to find that the ticket booth was still manned by a lonely palace guard who clearly had pulled the short straw for the day. The entrance fee was the same as that of the Amber Fort, so we decided not to bother given it looked like the fort was in disrepair, and instead sat and watched the view over Amber Fort and the city of Amer below. The scene was compressed by rocky hills on all sides, up which the old city walls wound at sometimes precipitous angles. At intervals the walls were studded with little outposts from which, we were told, the guards used to communicate sighting of friend or foe with mirrors, smoke or drums.

We came down the hill and back to where Baba was waiting for us. He jumped out the back of the rickshaw and into the driving seat, and whisked us away back towards Jaipur. On the way back, we stopped momentarily at the side of a lake in the middle of which was the Jal Mahal (Water Palace). The palace itself was still private, but the bank of the lake was a busy spot for costume photos, camel rides and hawking tourist gifts. We got out to take a couple of photos, but something in the area smelt so foul we got quickly back into the rickshaw and went on our way. Baba had suggested a few other places we could visit, but we were both tired from the heat and our bug so we asked him to take us home.

We shared a pizza in the restaurant for a late lunch, which sat a little uncomfortably for both of us. I spent some time sat out on the roof doing some admin, whilst Ellie took to the AC of the room downstairs. I did a little exercise when I got back to the room, but lunch still wasn’t sitting right and my body felt weak. By the evening Ellie wasn’t up for anything else to eat, so I went back upstairs for a light dinner where incidentally I met someone I knew from the year below at Christ Church (the second time this had happened in Rajasthan). I came back downstairs, and we went to bed.

Wednesday –

We both woke up Wednesday morning feeling unwell. I had arranged with Baba to pick us up that morning, so we messaged him to let him know we weren’t going to make it. We skipped breakfast and spent the morning scrolling through Hindi TV, which was actually fairly entertaining. By 11am, we both felt a little better and so went upstairs where Ellie had some jam toast and I had a lime soda. Back in the room, I slept for a few hours and woke again in the mid-afternoon. We both felt still not 100%, but equally were feeling the need to get out of the room for at least some of the day. We decided, therefore, to walk out towards some of boutique shops in the area for a gentle mooch and we would see how we went from there.

Our area, C Scheme, was clearly upmarket and the streets were fairly quiet and very clean. We walked the short distance to a local arts and crafts shop and cafe where we spent an hour or so, and I managed some food and a coffee. From there, we walked to a clothes shop, Anokhi, that we had been to in Kochi. The shop was on the edge of the largest park in Jaipur, central park, so we headed there next. The majority of the park was given over to a golf coruse, but the public areas where lush green and gorgeously cool in the evening light. We sat out on a little hillock to watch the world go by, and thought of what to do with the rest of the day. Whilst here, we were approached by a man and his young son who came to talk to us. He asked the usual questions about where we were going, where we’d been, how we liked Jaipur etc., then launched into a rambling monologue about morality, dharma, France and some other unconnected themes. Given I was still feeling a little under the weather, I couldn’t feign polite interest for long so cut him off mid-flow to take our leave. He said that we should join him for a party tomorrow, we told him we had plans.

We sat a little longer over the other side of the park and resolved to walk to a nearby restaurant we had earmarked, stopping on the way to pick up another case of emergency Vaseline. The restaurant we were heading for, Bar Palladio, was a up-market bar/restaurant in a hotel complex a short walk from the park. We took a seat outside in our own little private booth, surrounded by greenery and fairy lights. Our waiter took a shine to us, and clearly wanted to have more of a conversation with us but had no more English than to ask us where we were from and insist that Ellie was Indian. The food was more expensive than what we were used to but, unlike some of the fancier places we had been to in Udaipur, worth the money. We were feeling much improved from the morning, which was a relief to both of us as we were keen to get back out to see more of the city.

In Jaipur, you can order rickshaws on Uber for quite a lot cheaper than they quote you in the streets, though it can sometimes take a long time for the app to locate a driver for you. We found a Uber rickshaw for our journey home, and met him outside. I noticed after a minute that we had set off in the wrong direction, and realised I had set the destination to a completely different Pearl Palace. Annoyingly, I wasn’t able to cancel this mid journey, so we had to go all the way there before I then explained to the driver (or tried to) what I had done and asked him to take us to our actual hotel. He eventually got the point from my gesturing and pointing to the map on my phone and charged us quite a reasonable fee cash in hand to get there, all things considered. We eventually made it home, and off to bed feeling that we had managed to salvage the day after an inauspicious start.

Thursday –

We woke up Thursday feeling largely back to normal, and from here onwards we seemed to be on the mend. We had our breakfast, and made ready to head into the Old City in the centre of Jaipur. Baba was celebrating Eid on this day with his family, and besides most of the old city was walkable so we found a rickshaw to the New Gate and set out on foot from there. The Old City is entirely pink-red, and colour that the residents are compelled by law to paint their houses. We walked through a few of the city’s bazaars where vendors sold their wares from numbered shop-fronts along the road, and made our way to the Hawa Mahal. At some point, the Maharaja gave up Amer as their capital and moved instead to Jaipur, establishing the City Palace and Hawa Mahal here, as well as some other royal residences. The Hawal Mahal is a small palace for the women of the entourage, which was fronted by a massive elaborate honeycomb facade, from which the women could watch the festivities and life on one of Jaipur’s main streets without themselves being seen. This was evidentally quite a big deal for Rajasthani rajputs, as in all the palaces we had seen so far there was some elaborate system keeping the women hidden.

We walked around the narrow corridors and stain-glass windowed rooms of the little palace, and took in the view of the city centre from the palace’s roof. After paying my dues in photos with a couple of groups of Indian tourists, we headed further into the city and to the Jantar Mantar, which was one of the Maharaja’s collection of huge astronomical instruments hewn out of sandstone. We walked through these as the heat of the day started to rise. The park featured two huge sundials, the biggest of which could give the time accurate to 20 seconds. There were a variety of other instruments, most of which we didn’t understand but could be used to give some insight into the position of various heavenly bodies. This particular Maharajah, according to the information board, loved measuring heavenly bodies even more than he loved conquest (and apparently he really loved conquest).

We stopped for a coffee in an air conditioned cafe, and walked across the old city to a local botanical park. The shade was pleasant for a stroll, and the 20/- admission fee meant it was practically deserted besides from us. From here, we took another rickshaw back into C-scheme to the cafe attached to the Anokhi shop and we had seen it did fairly gentle sandwiches and wraps for our recovering stomachs. We ate, and took yet another rickshaw down to the hotel complex that last night’s restaurant was in. We had read in the guidebook that one of the upmarket hotels allowed entrance to the pool and poolside area for a 500/- (£5) each, and so we took the opportunity to cool down here in the afternoon heat. The pool was gloriously cool where the one in Kochi had been more like tepid bathwater, and the poolside grassy area was tranquil, and even had peacocks strolling around the place.

We had been told by a man that had sold Ellie a cheap watch in the Old City that it was the Gangaur Festival parade that evening, which was not to be missed. So, once we had spent a couple of hours at the poolside, we made our way back to the Old City and to outside the main gate of the city palace. The crowds had already begun to gather but given we were almost an hour early, we managed to find a spot up against the rope of the parade route. Revelers filled in behind us, and before long we were at the front of a crowd at least ten deep, waiting for the parade to kick off.

Gangaur festival celebrated the consort of Shiva, the goddess Parvati. The festival in Jaipur was celebrated with a parade which culminated with a idol of Parvati being processed down the street, to which women were supposed to pray for a good husband. As we waited for the parade to start, we were skimmed by a passing thunderstorm which threatened to completely drench us, but only gave us a little bit of a soaking with big fat rain drops before it abated. Apparently, when the wind in Rajasthan turns to the West in the summer there can be “Western Disturbance” which causes the cooler, more cloudy and sometimes rainy weather we had been having intermittently whilst here.

Eventually, the parade started. We had a few things to contend with at this point. Firstly, elderly Indian women seem to ubiquitously have an ability to elbow their way into tiny spaces in crowds. Ellie was surrounded by not one but two such women, and courageously battled for her space at the front against consistent pressure from bony shoulders and hands on the back. Secondly, seemingly the entire Jaipur police force and an army brigade had massed and stood right between us and the parade route, blocking our view. Thankfully, these two factors somewhat cancelled out as the feisty grandmothers shouted insistently until they moved at least a little out of the way.

The parade itself was an eclectic mix of dancing troupes, a troubled looking elephant, several camels some of which ridden by men with moustaches so long they could be held at arm’s length, a short appearance by the King of Jaipur, and, of course, the idol of Parvati bringing up the rear. A particular highlight was when, in the journalists section in front of the crowd, one photographer was pushed by another which resulted in a fully blown fist fight breaking out which was quelled after quite some time by the laconic police force.

Once the parade was over, we made our way to a restaurant close to our hotel. The restaurant had been reasonably well reviewed, though was largely deserted when we arrived. It was of the type we had seen many of during our time so far – serving a large Indian and Chinese menu, with a hodge-podge of “continental” dishes on the side. I went for a “sizzler” as I’d had one in Udaipur which wasn’t bad, and Ellie made the interesting choice of the ricotta and spinach cannelloni as curry still seemed quite ambitious on the stomach.

The food was by far the worst of the trip so far. The sizzler was pretty bad in its own right, with anaemic chips and a bizarre crusted patty of cottage cheese, whilst the cannelloni was downright foul. The spinach was a lurid green paste, and the “cheese” topping was equally unappetising. We ate what we could, and took our leave back to the hotel. Despite this slight hiccup, however, we were both glad to be feeling back on the mend and exploring again.

Friday –

After another trusty hotel rooftop breakfast, we met Tiger (actually Tiger this time, who loved that we were never 100% sure) outside. We had planned to go to a group of temples around sacred baths which is famous for both its beauty and huge monkey population. As we stepped out of the rickshaw we were met by both a young student guide explaining that he was a ‘monkey master’ who would help ‘protect you from the monkeys’ as well as explain the various temples and an older man offering to sell us peanuts to feed the monkeys. Given I (Ellie) had read some slightly off-putting reviews about how the potentially rabid macaques can get aggressive if you so much make accidental eye contact with their adorable babies (hard not to), we picked the protector and shunned the peanuts.

Our guide was a policing student from Jaipur called Vishnu, who was very sweet and eager to please. Along the hot walk to the first temple he showed us videos he’d taken just the day before of a leopard coming down to the bathing area to grab a monkey for lunch, and bought little jelly sweets to feed the monkeys. He took us to the Hanuman temple – the monkey God – and offered us the opportunity to go in if we wanted.

It was just us and the priest in the temple which made for a very personlised experience. After some time for quiet prayer, he led us to the front and performed what felt very much like a marriage ceremony which was also quite lovely, and made us considerably more endeared to his presentation of only £20 notes on the offering dish afterwards. PSA to any concerned parents we told him we were already married so he didn’t actually wed us without you!

We were then led down to the sacred pools of which there are 3 – one for monkeys, one for men, and one for women. The monkeys were genuinely doing breaststroke in the first, amongst other fascinatingly human-like activities like picking tics out of each other’s buttocks. In all honestly I did not love their forward nature, but the guide assured us he has spent years getting to know these monkeys and has absolute confidence on which you can play with and which could mess you up. Rob, on the other hand, happily let them jump all over him from the get go – at one point he had at least three hanging off him and they respect no personal boundaries let me tell you. Eventually Vishnu convinced me to let a baby on board which was 95% cute, a permissible 5% him backing his little pink butt up into my face. I felt pretty proud of myself in the end, even if the consistent double chin in my photos betrays my slight retreat!

We wandered around the some of the other temples in the group, notably the Surya (sun) temple at the top of the hill with an incredible view of Jaipur. Jaipur was first apparently India’s first ‘planned’ city, and definitely had a sense of order and more affluence even in the newer, ‘unplanned’ city edges than we’d seen in Udaipur and Jodhpur.

We wished Vishnu good luck with his policing career and headed back down the hill wearing multiple marks of our new blessings on our foreheads. Tiger then took us on to the Gaitor – royal tombs which which were both beautiful and peaceful – and to a block-printing warehouse/shop. Inside the warehouse were hundreds of wooden block-printing designs, some laid out on the table where the workers were in the middle of printing fabrics, and buckets of dye everywhere. The owner explained the printing and then washing in multiple substances process to set the dyes, and then led us through to the shop. It was pretty impressive to see that all the fabric was clearly hand-printed there, and Rob picked up a couple of new brightly coloured numbers which made both us and the owner very happy.

We popped to another fort which was stunning but even we were bit fort-ed out by this point so I’m sure another description isn’t needed here. Lunch was back at the upmarket arty shop we’d been to on the day I was most ill largely because it did delicious soothing Western food and I’d been so jealous when only Rob had eaten it previously as I’d been too nauseous that day. It surpassed our expectations and set us up for an afternoon of getting through some admin, most excitingly getting our teeth in to the Oxford house hunt.

In the evening we finally felt well enough to sample the famed cocktails on the roof of our restaurant which were as good as we’d hoped, and then headed to a nearby restaurant to risk our first proper curries since the onset of the stomach bug. Luckily they were absolutely delicious – I’d hoped for a Dal Tadka to rival the current topspot for my best breakfast of the trip (a heavily-gheed spicy lentil dal on the roof of our homestay in Kochi) and I got it. Rob had a dish based around cheese-stuffed potato in a tomato curry and we couldn’t decide which was better. Along with some sweet Indian families half-watching the silent cricket screen, probably the nicest waiter we’ve had in North India and a view over the still-bustling old city bazaar, it was a great ending to potentially our favourite Rajasthani city.

From Jaipur we were due to spend two nights up in the rural area to the north of the city called Shakehwati, famed for its many abandoned stately homes called havelis. From there, we come back to Jaipur for a few hours before catching the overnight train to Lucknow where we stay for one night, then onwards the next day to Varanasi – our next major stop.

Until then,

Rob & Ellie xxx