Namaste to Jaipur
Trip Start
Jun 07, 2008
1
64
188
Trip End
Jun 28, 2009
Jaipur,
Rajasthan,
India
Friday, November 7, 2008
At the top, we went to the Hindu temple, which is where the soldiers would go and drink rum and pray to the goddess of power and war. Then they would charge immediately into battle. They would use elephants to charge down gates of other forts, but at the Amber Fort they made sharp spikes on the doors so the elephants could not charge there gates. Some of the weapons that the soldiers were tiger claws, which were things you put on your knuckles with long claws and also daggers that also had two pistols on them. Jaipur is the home of the Rajputs, a group of warrior clans who ruled for about a 1000 years - we had dinner tonight with a family who are part of this warrior group!
At the Fort, we saw a Hindu service where they put red dots on our head and then there was very loud banging on drums by the priest, and then a lamp with lots of flames was passed around. It was cool. The fort was huge and painted pink (it is a law in Jaipur that you have to paint your house pink every other year.) When we left the temple, we saw some snake charmers. They had a black cobra and a baby cobra named Ali Bubba (the character from Aladdin that I was in the camp play this summer!), which they let me hold. He was tiny and very cute.
The Maharaj had twelve wives and one of the Maharajs's had 360 wives! That is a lot of wives, even for them. And none of the wives could ever see or meet each other so there were secret tunnels from their rooms to the Maharaj's room.
One of the most interesting thing we saw after the Fort was the biggest sundial in the world! They built it in the 1700s because that Maharaj was a great astronomer. They also had things that told your star sign and forture. Mr. Parker would have loved this place. He was my second grade teacher and he taught me how to use sundials. The sundial here even had second hands! And it works - I watched it. The place is called Jantar Mantar and it has fourteen large devices for measuring time, predicting eclipses, and tracking stars and planets.
In the afternoon, we went to see the City Palace, which is where the current Maharaj stays in Jaipur. He does not have a son so his grandson, who is 10, is the Crown Prince and will be the new Maharaj. I would like to be him! One of the old Maharaj's was huge - he was 7 feet tall and 4 feet wide and he weighed 660 pounds. I saw his pants and they were enormous!
We also walked around the town of Jaipur. There were tons and tons of people. I saw a lot of kids who asked us for money. it was very sad and at the end of the trip we are going to help an orphanage. One of the girls was just my age and I really wanted to give her some clothes and things. It feels like I am a millionaire because so many people don't have anything at all and lots of people are willing to do any job. India makes me think all the time - everything I am seeing is like nothing I have even seen before.
