{"id":1132,"date":"2013-12-18T22:03:42","date_gmt":"2013-12-18T14:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radcopter.com\/brianandmarisa\/worldtrip\/?p=590"},"modified":"2022-02-09T14:20:58","modified_gmt":"2022-02-09T14:20:58","slug":"ranthamborejaipur-part-ii-land-of-the-monkeys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/2013\/12\/18\/ranthamborejaipur-part-ii-land-of-the-monkeys\/","title":{"rendered":"Ranthambore\/Jaipur Part II: Land of the Monkeys"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was kind of nice to return to a city after our wildlife outing in Ranthambore. Jaipur, I think, was maybe the best choice for that return. It felt cleaner, quieter, and more manageable than the others we had visited. Part of that might be due to the fact that despite being founded in 1727, it was actually a highly planned city with a regular grid and cardinal orientation (roads run north-south and east-west). According to wikipedia (I can’t remember everything the guide said),  this was part of a Vedic planning tradition designed to increase the comfort citizens.<\/p>\n

So maybe it was the Vedic planning! Of course, it\u2019s possible that we were simply adjusting to being in India. We had become markedly more proficient at haggling with rickshaw drivers and were more willing to venture out of the hotel to find food or see the sights. We were picked up at the train station by a rickshaw-wallah named Raju and we ended up hiring him to drive us around the next day and show us the sights. He had a little book that other tourists had filled with hand-written testimonials of his quality as a driver and a guide to the city. This was something we hadn\u2019t seen before and it was definitely what convinced us to hire him. We visited a few sites with Raju: the Amber Fort, the Jal Mahal (Water Palace), and the Monkey Temple.<\/p>\n

Before heading up into the hills to see the Fort, Raju had us stop off at the Iswari Minar Swarga Sal. It’s a large tower in the Pink City built to let royal ladies view the city from above without being seen themselves. The inside has a spiral that you walk up instead of a staircase and it gives you a great view of the city. The Pink City got its name because it was painted pink to celebrate the visit of the Prince of Wales in 1876 and they’ve kept it up ever since. To be honest, it\u2019s not really a strong \u2018pink\u2019 so much as a \u2018sickly adobe\u2019. While the coloration was disappointing, the place itself was pretty cool. It\u2019s still a very active marketplace that caters to mostly Indians. There are groups of foreigners here and there but most of the shops are clearly for locals.<\/p>\n

\"You<\/a>
You can see the ‘pink’ in the Pink City.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The glorious density of Jaipur. It’s famous for being the most ‘planned’ city in India, with a grid and everything.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Raju<\/a>
Raju had us do this. I had the feeling he had done it before…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After the tower, Raju took us to the Royal Gater Tombs, where a king and some of his family are buried under tons of marble and other stone. It was very peaceful and the architecture was lovely.<\/p>\n

\"DSC_0113\"<\/a> \"DSC_0086\"<\/a> \"DSC_0076\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Next stop for us was the Amber Fort. This was only our second fort in India after the Red Fort in Agra. I think this one was much cooler and much more interesting. We hired a guide to show us around for an hour and got some nice explanations of what was what. We took a ton of pictures but the ones below more or less represent what we saw.<\/p>\n

\"Nice<\/a>
Nice little spot next to the river.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The steps up to the entrance.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Nice<\/a>
An architectural feature that caught my eye.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Ceiling<\/a>
Ceiling with inlaid mirrors designed to keep an area well lit. Since the mirrors reflect whatever’s around them, they would change the carpets below the mirrors to change to color of the room. Really cool idea and I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"I<\/a>
Courtyard in the center of the apartments for the king’s wives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The view the ladies of the court had onto the main audience courtyard. Though limited, the fact that it is carved from stone makes it very impressive.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"A<\/a>
A view of the river with the garden down below.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After spending a couple hours at Amber Fort we hopped in Raju’s rickshaw to the Water Palace. It turns out you can\u2019t actually get there these days because someone is working on converting it into a hotel. So, here\u2019s a picture of it with a stray dog cooling off a bit in the foreground (and then one of us).<\/p>\n

\"Dog<\/a>
Dog and palace.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Us<\/a>
Us and palace.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The next stop on the tour was the Monkey Temple. It is known for having a few hundred monkeys living around it. Tourists come and feed them. It was here we learned one of our most notable lessons about being a foreign tourist in India. It contributed a lot to the emotional turmoil that Marisa described in the last post. But first, monkey pictures!<\/p>\n

\"Monkeys.\"<\/a>
Monkeys.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Marisa<\/a>
Marisa feeding monkeys.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Brian<\/a>
Brian feeding monkeys.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Baby<\/a>
Baby monkey!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We were taken up to the temple by a local kid named Ganesh. He seemed nice enough and we chatted on the way up. For his services, he said we could pay him \u2018as we like\u2019 and we said ‘okay then, 100 rupees’. Apparently, \u2018as you like\u2019 means something different in India. He moaned about it enough that we relented, giving him another 100 to alleviate our respective discomfort (as a reference, we’d given 200 to the guide at the Amber Fort for a tour over an hour long, including explanations of everything that we asked about). Even that wasn\u2019t enough! We refused to give him any more and he moped the rest of the way down to where Raju was waiting for us. Some people are just hard to satisfy, I guess.<\/p>\n

The next day we struck out on our own with no Raju to chauffeur us. We re-visited the Pink City to see the Jantar Mantar, the Hawa Mahal, and the Central Museum in Albert Hall.<\/p>\n

The Jantar Mantar is in the heart of the Pink City and is one of the most famous sights in Jaipur. This place was pretty incredible. It looks like some kind of absurdist playground filled with steel wheels, crescent-shaped slides, and stairways to nowhere. It makes no sense until you listen to the audio guide. Even then it\u2019s hard to follow if you don\u2019t have a basic background in astronomy. It turns out the strange sculptures are all astronomy tools designed and built by Jai Singh in the 1700s. Most of them are sun dials of one sort or another. There are also tools one can use to plot out where things are in the sky. My astronomy kung fu is pretty weak so I can\u2019t give you a good explanation of most of them, but here are some pictures along with what I can remember.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The world’s largest sundial.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Not<\/a>
Not the world’s largest, but still a sundial, the tilt of which is aligned with the tilt of the Earth..<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"DSC_0233\"<\/a>
More manageable version of the world’s largest. The time is marked by the position of the shadow you can see near the middle of the picture. It’s accurate to two minutes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"This<\/a>
This pic is worth a closer look. You can see the markings they used to find the position of objects in the sky.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"DSC_0247\"<\/a>
This sundial had something to do with Sagittarius, which is both me and Marisa. Don’t ask me to explain it though…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"DSC_0237\"<\/a> \"DSC_0242\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After Jantar Mantar we went to the Hawa Mahal, part of the larger City Palace. This wasn\u2019t quite as intellectually engaging as the first site but we still enjoyed wandering around. The architecture is beautiful and you get some nice views of the street.<\/p>\n

\"DSC_0272\"<\/a> \"DSC_0277\"<\/a> \"DSC_0280\"<\/a> \"DSC_0285\"<\/a> \"DSC_0295\"<\/a> \"DSC_0301\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Our third sight (site? sight? I\u2019m never sure which to use…) was the museum in Albert Hall. We took some alleys to get there  the Pink City to and got a glimpse of how active the trade in the city is. Each area in the alleys seemed to have a different trade. The ones that we walked through started off as stationery (for weddings?) and then went into typesetting and stamps, and then finished off with textiles. We were the only tourists walking through and it felt really cool to see a more \u2018hidden\u2019 part of the city.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The top floor of the museum.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The museum was just okay. The building has a different style of architecture and some of the artifacts they have on display were cool. On the whole I\u2019d give it 3 out of 5 stars.<\/p>\n

The stuff we did in Jaipur doesn’t really convey how much we enjoyed being there. While the sights we saw were lovely, we got a lot more satisfaction from both being in a more comfortable city but also being more comfortable with being in an Indian city in general. We were able to negotiate rickshaw fares, walk around without feeling self-conscious, and had become used to the various little things that make Indian cities so unique and challenging. We were happy to leave northern India behind us and Jaipur gave us a nice sendoff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was kind of nice to return to a city after our wildlife outing in Ranthambore. Jaipur, I think, was maybe the best choice for that return. It felt cleaner, quieter, and more manageable than the others we had visited. Part of that might be due to the fact that despite being founded in 1727, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-india","category-places"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1132"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1673,"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions\/1673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}