Day 17: Jaipur
Trip Start
Sep 21, 2006
1
18
228
Trip End
Jun 01, 2007
Jaipur,
India
Sunday, October 8, 2006
North of the city, a great wall traces the rocky hills. We're now in Amber, once the capital of Jaipur province. A 7-minute climb takes us to Amber Fort, a vast palace and defence constructed in the reign of Maharaja Man Singh from 1592. The facade of the fort is part-covered in bamboo scaffolding
01 Palace of the Winds
. Part of the complex is closed while it undergoes extensive renovation. Past elephants lifting tourists to the top and the usual tat-sellers, is the Suraj Pol (Sun Gate) and within, a huge garden courtyard, the Jaleb Chowk. Here, where war booty was once displayed, are milling tourists, refreshment stalls and further hawkers. "Please leave me alone!" We are only free of sales patter once we pass into the next courtyard, more elaborate gardens and the first fully functioning fountain I've seen here. Left is the red sandstone Divan-I-Am, where the Maharaja would receive his subjects' petitions, beyond, the delicately painted and mosaiced Ganesh Pol. This leads to a third courtyard containing the mirror-tiled Jai Mandir (Hall of Mirrors), roped off for its own protection (sadly graffiti is rife here).Despite the vandalism, there is plenty of the original decoration in place, and with fine vantage points over the gardens, lake and defences, it is still possible to imagine the palace in its heyday.
On the return journey, we visit the cenotaphs, Royal Gaitor, a park of memorials to various maharajas in the shade of boddhi trees and one 150-yeard-old banyam tree. Our guide is amusing, laying out facts about the rulers, with few verbs, "7ft tall, 4ft wide, very fat, 300 wives, no children, too fat", "brain haemorrage, too much drinking", "120 children, all die", "polo player, fall off horse, die".
For our entertainment this evening, we're off to the candy-coloured confection that is the Raj Mandir cinema for a Bollywood blockbuster. It's a full house, of cheering, laughing families (including small children), but we're rather stumped by the Hindi-language flick, a mix of gangster comedy, generation-gap romance, song and a vision of Gandhi. I was hoping for technicolour sari-clad women choreographed in the cornfields. This was far too contemporary.
