Akashdeep Hotel Jaipur

... It was possible to climb up to the Fort via elephant, but I just couldn't imagine being on a poor elephant in that heat so I opted to walk. Apparently a few years ago an elephant attacked and killed someone at the Fort attracting the scrutiny of animal welfare workers who now regulate the elephants so that they can each make only 5 trips up and down the hill and they only work from 8:00 until about 11:00 - not "working" during the ...

We didn't find Jaipur city that nice of a place. It's called the "Pink City", after its "pink" houses that were built to cover up ****** construction materials. But it's not really pink, more like a peachey, amber, orange yuck colour.

So there's not much to write about the city itself, seems like there's lots of money (lots of high class shops, restaurants etc), but also lots of poverty at the same time - typical India really it seems. We came ...

... upon seeing them you would have to agree. Some of them are quite fantastic monuments. And very strange to look at, but apparently they have been proven to be very very accurate.

For sunset we visited Galta temple, otherwise known as the monkey temple and we were soon to find out why. As the dusk falls, lots of little monkeys appear out of nowhere (helped along by some locals feeding them fruit and veg). Some of them had cute little baby ...

Wow - Holi Cow! what a fun day. The festival of Holi coninciding with last night's full moon - brings out madness and technicolour galore. Children and playful adults buy coloured poweder to paste on other peoples' faces and clothes at random . It is a bugger to wash out! Many people had their oldest clothes on - Indiandy was now exception - to cope with the showers. Day began at 6 am as we drove an hour ...

... a ton of other Indians that had brought blankets and were sleeping on the floor. The overall experience took me back to my Nica days and I was glad when we found out there was a lab across the street that opened at 8am that we could use. After some confusion due to the fact that we don't speak Hindi, we finally were able to get across what we needed and find out we could get our results around 1pm. We decided to kill our time visiting Jantar Mantar. After hanging out at Jantar ...

... part of the city has a protective 'great wall', running over 11 kms and the third largest in the world. Returning towards the city we stopped to look at the lake 'palace' of 'Jal Mahal', built purely as a music and dancing centre for the maharajah, in the centre of a lake created by a large dam. This has become rubbish strewn and polluted over the years but is now being slowly cleaned up. Back into the crowded madness of the city and we visited the 'Jantar Mantar ...

... anything else, and trying to capture how big these structures were was hard. It also had crazy charts used for astrological signs that would have been used to check the compatibility of marriages of the royal family. After that we were allowed to roam around the city on our own, and we all pretty much decided to go shopping. Rajasthan is known for its handicrafts (because it near the Thar Desert, there wasn't good ...

... of their government hotels). Finally, we decided to give the friends a chance since they had waited at the bus station for us for an hour and seemed very nice to Sarah. We grabbed some food across the street from the bus station and introduced ourselves. They seemed nice enough, but were embarrassed and frustrated with us that they were seen being interrogated by the police. "It's bad for my family's reputation," said Sunny. After a bit, things settled ...

... and to the amusement of a local man. The first courtyard holds an ornate palace which now contains a textile exhibition - showing off royal clothing from polo outfits to ceremonial saris. The next courtyard contains the Hall Of Public Audiences and is surrounded by some amazing pink walls - the hall had an exhibition of swords/guns and two silver urns (used to take Madho Singh II's water to England as he didn't trust the English water for his visit there) which are ...

... insomma, con tutto che era un maraja, anche lui avrà avuto le sue gatte da pelare con gli umori femminili. Lo immagino rientrare nel suo appartamento, tutto decorato di frammenti di specchio per isolare dal caldo e dal freddo (praticamente un termos formato casa, belissimo), e mordicchiarsi le unghie tra la barba pensando a cosa raccontare a quelle mogli più vecchie e brutte, forse sposate solo per ragioni politiche. E magari ...