Amber Fort

Trip Start Dec 26, 2008
1
21
27
Trip End Feb 06, 2009

Flag of India  , Rajasthan,
Friday, January 16, 2009

A second day in Jaipur found us heading to the Amber Fort. There are an awful lot of forts in this part of the country. There was a lot of fighting in the olden days, apparently. As Ted has finally succumbed to the dreaded Delhi Belly, we decided to take a rickshaw there, rather than the bus, and found a lovely guy with his kids to take us there. The kids were all in school uniform, and clearly loved having some foreigners in the cab. The 12 year old boy, Abdullah, spoke fabulous English and gave us a running commentary of where we were going. They were so enamoured of us that when it came to drop them off at school, they all yelled and so their dad let them come with us!

Amber fort is just outside Jaipur, and is pretty impressive. We've found that the audio tours for these kinds of places are well worth it - if you can avoid the guides hounding you outside - so we plodded around, and took in the sights. These Moguls (I think that's from when most of the forts date) knew their construction, building these things on the side of cliffs, essentially. They are all so opulent as well.

Our cab driver then took us to Narangarh fort, which overlooks Jaipur. It's in a state of disrepair, but the view over the Pink city was phenomenal.

We then had a moment with our rickshaw driver. One of the things you learn pretty quickly here is how to deal with the persistent attention, and to agree prices up front. This is what we'd done with our driver for the day. When it came to dropping us off, Ted and I agreed to give him a 25% tip as he'd taken us to the fort as an extra, plus we'd been really happy with his service. He was not happy, and expected us to pay him double what we'd originally agreed. Usually, they all try this on but when you have a friendly discussion with them, they back down. This guy didn't and was really quite aggressive towards Ted. In the end, we gave him a bit extra just to leave us alone. You get used to paying Western prices - and Ted & I agree that we should be paying more for things than the locals - but in this situation, when a price has been agreed, then that is a different matter when they try and take you for a ride. It's really tough, and it's hard to walk away, but sometimes you have to.

One thing I've noticed that's different in Rajesthan than a lot of the other places we've visited is the saris. The saris here are so much more colourful and ornate than those that we've seen elsewhere. Yes, at the wedding we saw some beautiful saris, but here they are worn by women on the street - all kinds of women, be they high class, low class, buying, selling. There really is no differentiation, they all seem to wear very bright colours.

As Ted & I are now old pros when it comes to the trains around here, we were booked on the evening train from Jaipur to Jodphur, and so 5pm found us in the scrum on the platform trying to get on our train. No 2AC, unfortunately, so 3rd class it was but as it was only a 5 1/2 hour journey, we reckoned we could cope. The chaos that this entails is pretty funny - as you all know, Ted is a big guy and the passageways through the carriages are pretty small. That did not stop a local literally climbing over the top of Ted to get to his seat, when we weren't moving quickly enough. If it had been a train in the UK, we'd still be there today, all falling over each other to be polite.

An uneventful train journey - apart from Ted's dicky tummy and my vomiting - brought us to Jodhphur in the dead of night.
Print this entry