On Friday we shared a taxi with a French couple out to Samod. Samod is a town about 45km out of Jaipur. As usual, it has a palace and fort! The palace is also a fancy hotel - 99 euros per night (actually not to bad, Phil was tempted to stay there a night, but our stuff was back in Jaipur).
When we arrived the hotel had a convention on, so they couldn't take us on a tour. We went for a walk up the hill above the palace to view the fort. There are good rock stairs and walking tracks around here, so it is a nice place to go for a walk and get views across the plains of Rajasthan from the top of the hill. The hills around are a lot like the rocky hills around Alice Springs. The monsoon rain has made the country a lot greener than Alice, although the scrub on the hills is similar.
After the walk, the convention session had finished (Friday afternoon early knock-off happened just like Oz) so we got to be taken around the palace halls. These are very well restored, so this place was well worth the visit even though there are only a few sections open to tours.
The entry fee is 250IRs - seems a bit steep but you get 250IRs credit towards your lunch bill at the hotel restaurant. The four of us ordered food to a bit over our 1000IRs credit. The restaurant prices are obviously high (fancy hotel service), but we did get a decent light lunch and drink out of it. This was the first restaurant we had been to that had cloth napkins - that's real class.
That night back in Jaipur we went to the revolving restaurant at the Om Hotel. The restaurant is on top of the hotel on the 14th floor. There are great views of Jaipur as the restaurant revolves slowly. This was another cloth napkins restaurant, two in one day after 4 months was a bit of a shock. This was definitely worth doing, good service, good views. Turn up before sunset to get both the light and dark views oacross Jaipur.
