We arrived in Jaipur at about 8pm to an onslaught of rickshaw drivers and general pushy salesman, 'friendly helpers' and general chaos. As we had decided to walk to our hotel (we had no reservation so to call it our hotel at this stage is being a tad optimistic), this put a few drivers noses well out of joint, it was as if we had personally insulted their entire family by having the audacity to use our legs. So after a few angryish words from Grace to one particular 'henry kelly' we set off, just me, Grace, our bags and a chap who randomly decided that we were his friends. All I will say is the hotel looked a lot closer on the map! Luckily our first choice hotel (despite being the most popular hotel in Jaipur and no#1 rated on trip advisor no less!) took pity on us and a room was suddenly available... see random men who walk with you do have a use if you look scared enough of them. The Pearl Palace hotel (highly recommended by many a guidebook and more importantly our friend Rose) was a delight, we were shown to a lovely room where we dropped our bags and then decided to hit the rooftop restaurant for a beer or 3!
Next morning we discoverd that we could have room service at no extra charge and we thought it would be rude not to indulge in breakfast in bed, so our start wasnt exactly early... it also didnt help our cause that we had a tv with several English movie channels and plenty of sports channels showing football and IPL cricket (which to say is popular here would be a gross understatement)... so by early afternoon then we were ready to rock and roll with some more palace/temple/fort/museum action.
Firstly we decided to go to what is locally known as the monkey temple, this due to the fact that its a temple with a loads of monkeys living in it. The temple was nice enough as temples go, many nice paintings and carving, not to mention some cool Ganesha statues... but come on, there were loads of monkeys!! and they were cool as Christmas. After I got my monkey fix we headed off to the royal gaitor, which is basically a big field with loads of rich peoples elaborate graves and tombs in. It was pretty tranquil as we were the only people there, it was nice enough. Grace can always find a cemetery to wander round! On our way back to the hotel we got dropped off by our man at some cool old art deco cinema (I think it was called the Raj mandhir) as we were thinking of taking in a bit of bollywood, unfortunately the only film was the Indian equivalent of American pie and didn't look that appealing so we decided not to bother and instead headed for an 'English style pub' called Gregorys so that I might finally be able to track down a pint of Guinness (yeah I know that an Irish pub would have been better but I didn't really have much of a choice), it was all in vain however as the nearest I got to a European beer was a mini can of heineken which cost about 4 quid! The quest continues...
The next day was a very lazy affair indeed we didn't really do much apart from laze about at the hotel watching movies on tv. We only really ventured outside to go to a nearby posh hotel for a swim, it was lovely.
We did however have an early start the next day as we planned a trip to the Amber palace on the outskirts of town. We got there nice and early at about 9am only to find that there were already a shed load of coaches there (its a pretty famous place by all accounts), this palace is quite high up on the hillside and so there are 3 ways of getting there, the fascist jeeps who will take you up and give you precisely 1 hour before bringing you back (if you miss it thats your fault, sorry guv) or you can go by elephant for about a 1000 rs, this was not the place that I first wanted to ride an elephant,and it was a bit expensive so we decided that we would take the 3rd option, which was the cheapest of the lot, its known as walking and Indian people seem to marvel and stare when westerners do it! It was only about 20 mins of a bit of a staircase,and there weren't that many hawkers to resist so it was fairly easy.The palace itself was pretty impressive, it was not as ornate or as opulent as some but I liked its basic stripped back nature and labyrinthine mess that you could easily get lost in if it were not for the 3000 people there. One particular rooftop seemed to elude us and so we enlisted the aid of a cleaner who showed us around a corner, up a step, through a door and up a staircase to the elusive rooftop terrace, all in all it took 30 seconds and we could have found it ourselves given a few minutes,so when the kid did the usual 'handout, give me some cash' signal, I didn't refuse and lobbed him 10 rupees for his trouble. the cheeky blighter then decided that his 'trouble' was worth far more and demanded 50! this in a nutshell is my only real problem with india, everyone is on the take, everyone sees you as nothing more than a walking wallet. Its small instances like these that really piss you off. needless to say I refused and in so many words told him to go away! So we descended the staircase past the people trying to sell us good karma, paint red dots on our heads or offer us pictures with snakes in baskets (don't get me started on the barbarism this entails, it angers me) so we got few pics anyway... joking, I'm joking... and headed back to out rickshaw man for the day. He decided that we really needed to see some authentic Indian craftsman in action, making jewelery, textiles and ceramics, of course this is for education purposes only and is not a sales pitch at all... after we got out of the jewellery shop we decided that textiles and ceramic making could wait for another day. we also refused to buy (I mean watch the making of) some carpets... what the hell do I want with a carpet!! I have one bag, one!
Onward dear friends anyway onward... our next port of call on this busy day was the royal observatory in the middle of town, this is basically a sun trap park with immense sundials, moon dials, and other obscure built objects for the purposes of giant astrology. it was all built in the 1700's, mental. The rest of the day petered out amid some fishal bidniz of train ticket booking and a visit to Mcdonald's for a milkshake... yes they taste exactly the same here. we then headed back to the hotel for dinner, tv and bed.
Nothing really to report from the next day,another museum, bit of shopping (well browsing), bit of wandering and oh yes we found a bar that showed the football and we watched United beat liverpool 2-1 with a few beers. I of course kept the gloating texts to me mate chris (a dyed in the wool scouser) to a repectful level! ...great day, really great day!
Hungover we had a slow start to the day. today was to be our last day in Jaipur and it was with a bit of a sad twinge that we packed up and checked out of the hotel. we did however have several hours to kill before our train to Delhi so we went for a walk. An event occurred then that trouble me greatly...
Walking toward the park for a bit of shade and a bit of a read we happened upon a lad (14) and his music teacher who after striking up a pleasant conversation informed us that he had travelled the world as a sitar and tabla player and was now running a school in Jaipur. lovely. what was more lovely was the fact that he was off to his school that afternoon and wondered if we would come along as the kids would love to see us (as exotic westerners) and play some music for us, even better would be if Grace could play a bit of flute for them and, god forbid, I have a strum on the guitar. Now i'm sure you are thinking like i was at the time SCAM! RUN AWAY! however the guy assured us that we he was genuine and would ask us for no money or anything other than our time. so satisfied we followed him to the 'school' (see what I did there? 'school' with ' ', this should give you a clue...) about an hour later we found ourselves in the middle of what must be described politely as a shanty town, this did not bode well. where was the school? where were the kids? it turns out that the school is basically the blokes house, the kids however were real, well it was his family, and a few did show up, there was even a bit of a singsong for our benefit... thats when the hard sell began. give us your money...
If I wasnt so sad at the teachers lies, his blatant exploitation of those kids and the fact that there were children present I would have beaten the guy right there. He was the same as every other hawker, scammer, shark and charlatan we had been warned against. I was livid. the fact that he genuinely was an internationally travelled musician (i saw the photos) didnt seem to have given him any perspective, he had money, that was obvious, yet he still used the kids as a way of scamming mugs like me into giving him more. Believe it or not the kids were happy, thay have had no comparison of wealth that we (and the teacher) have had, no barometer of luxury to measure their lives against. Thats what really got me the fact that they were just being used. I actually did part with a couple of hundred rupees in the end (coincidentally thats all we had on us) but not through guilt or pity, just more through a resigned sense of inevitability, and just to get the hell out of there. The 2 teachers (for his mate/brother/partner had joined us by then) seemed annoyed at my meagre offering but I was in no mood to be affected and we left, the first teacher offered to walk with us some of the way, I think it was my look rather than my abusive words which convinced him that wouldn't be necessary.
We then decided to go get our bags from the hotel and head for the station after a quick drink. All in all it was a bit of a crappy way to end a great week in jaipur, still we put it behind us and headed for the station. Destination Delhi...
