Jaipur, India

A taste of India.

Firstly, Yesterday (Sunday) was a bit like travelling from Wales into England! Within only a few hours we went from a slightly developed town with cows everywhere, rubbish roads, chaotic traffic, litter, elephants, camel’s and carts etc etc to what I consider as one of the finest cities in the world, New Delhi! I’ll be honest it’s just another city, but it’s very nice and green and certainly helps me understand where all India’s money goes but, more on New Delhi in my final entry for India.

Back to todays matter in hand. As mentioned at the end of my last blog I way blubbering on about ‘typical India’, a matter I will continue blubbering on about now although I feel the photos will help support what I mean. We spent two days in Jaipur which is a lovely city by Indian standards. It’s slightly tidier, a few less cows and the traffic lights are obeyed slightly more. But it was still hectic, there was the odd cow and it was still smelly in places which is a good thing, because I want to see India, not the same old western city stuff. The real highlight though was getting to walk around the back streets and be able to see what the locals get up to. I know that sounds like hippy traveler talk but it was nice not to be hassled and treated like a tourist. We just walked round looking at colourful clothes and, spices and, juicy fruit and, veg stores. Every now and then a camel and cart would walk by or we would walk by a cart full of deep fried food which actually looked and smelt tasty and edible. It was all quite agreeable.

We also visited the observatory which for those of you that know me, I found very interesting! Even though it basically consisted of many clocks of various sizes. However, I believe that with a bit of maths these clocks could calculate positions of stars and planets and the biggest clock was accurate to 1 second which is quite impressive for a 500 year old instrument. We then visited another palace! Love em, and temples! Kinda goes with the territory though and this palace was rather interesting, no people trying to sell us stuff, quiet, good guide plus lots of stuff to read (I seem to take more in if I can read it!).

Our hotel in Jaipur also had a swimming pool, our first of the tour which was extremely welcomed as it has gotten rather toasty over the past week. I also have a confession to make, I happily gave in to the temptation of a vege pizza and fries the other night which was bloody lovely. I did Indian it up though with a bit of naan bread. I do like Indian food but the cravings for a load of carbs got too much! A few of us really indulged today (Monday) but i’ll save that for the next entry, it was uber tasty!

I hope you enjoy the puppet show as much as we did! Also I hope the turban application guide is useful, I know Parky has been wanting to learn for many years now!