The Pink City

So far we've mainly stayed in Mumbai, but now we're going to be starting to travel a bit more, starting this past weekend in Jaipur. Our trip had a bit of a rocky start when our 4am car pickup (for a 5:40am flight--totally insane) didn't show and we ended up having to hop a rickshaw to the airport.

Anyway, Jaipur itself was really fun and interesting. In general, it was much more of a throwback to the Maharaja era of India and the buildings and structures were beautiful. The city calls itself the pink city, but that's a bit of a misnomer because most of the structures are a reddish orange hue and a couple honey colored buildings tossed in for good measure.

On the first day, we went to the city palace and Hawa Mahal (the ladies palace, overlooking the city palace). These buildings were incredible. The city palace had some of the most beautiful red sandstone and felt like a different world. We will post some photos soon, but the lattice stone and the colors of the palace were really awesome.

After our sightseeing, we went to get Aruveydic massages. Now, given my personality, I can't say I was entirely comfortable disrobing and facing the prospect of hot oil dousing my body, but, as has been my motto for the trip, "When in Rome..." It was actually pretty fun and I felt sprightly and limber afterwards!

Later that night, Lindsay and I went to a place that was meant to be a recreation of an old Rajahstani (Jaipur is the state capital of Rajasthan) village. It was sort of like Medieval times mixed with Epcot Center with a little Indian "masala" cooked in as well. It was a place that many Indians seem to go for entertainment and it was really fun. We had dinner sitting on the floor and they kept filling our plates with extremely spicy, but really good food, topped off with a dessert that can be best described as batter dipped in sugar and mixed with oil and heart disease. Needless to say, it was incredible. After dinner we walked around the "village grounds" and saw a boy doing acrobatics atop a huge pole, elephant rides, henna stations, a little girl doing Indian dances while picking up money and rings with her eyelid and various other "indigenous" activities from the villages of yore.

Sunday, we had one of the highlights of the trip so far for me. We arranged for a car to take us to a place called Amber fort located about 30 minutes from Jaipur. Despite promises of this car being AC, we basically were dripping in sweat by the time we got there (partially from the 220 degree temperature inside and partially from nerves because he kept starting and stopping the ignition while driving--defying auto engineering). But when we arrived it was really awesome. Amber was the ancient fort for the Maharaja before they moved to Jaipur and it was an incredible structure. It was massively huge, had an old moat and some of the most intricate wall design and hallways I've ever seen. It had the same sandstone, marble, honey colored colors and conjured images of a really old era. This is something that cannot be done justice with words, so we will try to post photos soon.

In any event, it was really nice to see a place like Jaipur, which seems like a different world from Mumbai given its pace, color, food and lifestyle. It's not a place that I would have wanted to spend much more time in, but it was a really fun and great place to visit for the weekend.