Jaipur for a day

After a nice and relaxed day in Pushkar, I left this quiet place towards the big city of Jaipur – the capital of Rajasthan. Here I met up with the two guys I had met in Pushkar and the girl they were travelling with and we spent some time wandering through the old town, known as the Pink City, surprise surprise, because all the buildings are a reddish-pink.

We all arrived too late to do any real sightseeing, but one of the people I was with knew someone who lived in Jaipur, and he showed us around a bit in the car and took us to Naharangar Fort. This fort is on the top of a hill overlooking the entire of city of Jaipur. We arrived there before sunset, so had the opportunity to walk around some of the open areas of the fort and admire the view over the city. We then went to the fort restaurant/bar, where we had a few beers watching the sunset and listening to the sounds of Jaipur. Funnily enough, the view always seemed to change, between broad daylight, then at sunset and once it was dark, the city was just lit up by all the lights. It was truly a wonderful thing to see, especially in good company and some beer after a long day travelling and walking around Jaipur.

The Naharangar Fort was built in 1734 and from it and possibly attached to it, one can see a huge wall (something like the great wall of China – obviously on a different scale though) winding through the hills connecting various forts and palaces around Jaipur.

On our way to dinner we passed by the Hawa Mahal (the wind palace), which one cannot enter, but it is in the old city and was built in such a way, that no matter where one stands in the building, there is always a breeze – I imagine this being quite nice in the heat of the city.

There is also a lake palace in Jaipur, though it does not seem to be as nice as the one in Udaipur, which I am slightly upset at not having gone to – oh, well more reason to come back to India. The past two weeks have gone by so quickly, I did not realise that I’ve been here for so long already! India is a crazy country with so many things to see and places to go. It seems that the more I do and the more people I meet, the more I find that I want to discover and see. I think that even if one spends a lifetime here, there will always be new things to discover; it’s such a varied place as well – no place is like the other and the people are also different everywhere (except for the rickshaw drivers who will always try to rip you off no matter where you are), but if you’re aware of it, it’s fine.

After dinner, we wanted to go clubbing, but unsurprisingly got rejected at the door, with all of us wearing flip flops, shorts, or light trousers and clearly in our travel attire. It was worth a try though ;) In any case, I ended up at home at around 1 a.m. had an amazing shower did my emails and crashed. The next day when I woke up, I checked out and braved the 6 hour journey to Agra – where the Taj Mahal was waiting.