Clearly I haven't been posting from India as frequently as I'd intended to, but it's been difficult to find the time and mental space to sit down and write. I'll try to broadly capture what we got up to in Jaipur, but will have to post pictures later. In the meantime, please be patient with this text-heavy blog post.
December 1-4: Jaipur
We arrived in Delhi via Air India on December 1. The airline wasn't as bad as everyone had made it out to be, though the movie selection was awful (the only English movies were Sex in the City I, Sex in the City II, and the Hangover). We made it through security without any troubles, and then went in search of the driver that we had hastily booked the day before to take us to Jaipur. After an hour of waiting, he was still nowhere to be found. Finally, after calling the cab booking company three times - and using up all of the credit on our UK SIM cards - we found him and embarked on the five and a half hour drive to Jaipur. I can't say much about the journey, as I nodded in and out the entire time. However, Ritchie reported that it was an endless stream of small shops selling car parts and construction materials. He likened it to the Aurora Avenue of India.
We arrived at our guest house (austere, but clean) late in the evening and, due to jet lag, woke up at an ungodly hour. We set about exploring the city by foot and, true to form, did not use a guide but waited to stumble upon the sites. We were lucky the first day, taking in a museum, a palace, and the very dusty old town, all of which is hued the same shade of peach - hence the moniker, "the Pink City." We also stopped by the train station to book tickets to Udaipur, which was an interesting experience involving long lines, attempted hoppings of the queue by shady looking characters, and absolutely no available tickets in sleeper cars to Udaipur.
After the first day, we knew to expect no sidewalks, dust, animal crap, and other effluence on the streets and took tuk-tuks (three-wheeled motorized rickshaws) everywhere. Our first stop was the clothing bazaar, where I intended to buy cloth for a sari for the second night of the wedding. We spent some time wandering around, but I'm not a natural shopper and ended up buying some relatively pretty fabric in the first shop that we spent any real time in. The salesman then took us to see the "master stitcher" - a soft spoken gentleman with a pedal-run sewing machines in a tiny slot of a shop. He measured me as curious onlookers gawked and promised that my clothes would be ready the next day. We bought Ritchie a traditional korta and pajama, which he will almost certainly never wear again, but we figured was a critical part of the wedding experience. (The wedding was an experience in its own right, so I'll post about that separately - hopefully with pictures.)
On our third day in Jaipur, we had the opportunity to watch - and participate in - an elephant polo match. This was one of the highlights of our trip to Jaipur. As Ritchie described it, elephant polo is a game dreamed-up by a mad man. Who else would think that massive, slow-moving animals would be good sportsman? We sat on the back of elephants and held onto a rope with one hand and a very long - and heavy - polo stick with the other. The elephant driver sat in front and steered the beast by kicking it behind the ears. The elephants lumbered slowly from one end of the field to the other, while the players tried to hack at a soccer ball with the heavy polo sticks. Onlookers sat under a white tent sipping tea and eating little finger sandwiches while uniformed servers brought cold drinks - it all felt very colonial and something that I'll likely never do again. Unless, of course, anyone knows of any elephant polo leagues looking for players in Seattle.
On the fourth day, we rested. Sightseeing and weddings are exhausting work! The next day, though, we hired a tuk-tuk to take us to Amber Fort, which is a couple of miles outside of Jaipure. The site is the original seat of the Jaipur Maharajas and much of the palace has been restored. That evening, we caught a flight to Udaipur and so ended our five days in Jaipur.
December 1-4: Jaipur
We arrived in Delhi via Air India on December 1. The airline wasn't as bad as everyone had made it out to be, though the movie selection was awful (the only English movies were Sex in the City I, Sex in the City II, and the Hangover). We made it through security without any troubles, and then went in search of the driver that we had hastily booked the day before to take us to Jaipur. After an hour of waiting, he was still nowhere to be found. Finally, after calling the cab booking company three times - and using up all of the credit on our UK SIM cards - we found him and embarked on the five and a half hour drive to Jaipur. I can't say much about the journey, as I nodded in and out the entire time. However, Ritchie reported that it was an endless stream of small shops selling car parts and construction materials. He likened it to the Aurora Avenue of India.
We arrived at our guest house (austere, but clean) late in the evening and, due to jet lag, woke up at an ungodly hour. We set about exploring the city by foot and, true to form, did not use a guide but waited to stumble upon the sites. We were lucky the first day, taking in a museum, a palace, and the very dusty old town, all of which is hued the same shade of peach - hence the moniker, "the Pink City." We also stopped by the train station to book tickets to Udaipur, which was an interesting experience involving long lines, attempted hoppings of the queue by shady looking characters, and absolutely no available tickets in sleeper cars to Udaipur.
After the first day, we knew to expect no sidewalks, dust, animal crap, and other effluence on the streets and took tuk-tuks (three-wheeled motorized rickshaws) everywhere. Our first stop was the clothing bazaar, where I intended to buy cloth for a sari for the second night of the wedding. We spent some time wandering around, but I'm not a natural shopper and ended up buying some relatively pretty fabric in the first shop that we spent any real time in. The salesman then took us to see the "master stitcher" - a soft spoken gentleman with a pedal-run sewing machines in a tiny slot of a shop. He measured me as curious onlookers gawked and promised that my clothes would be ready the next day. We bought Ritchie a traditional korta and pajama, which he will almost certainly never wear again, but we figured was a critical part of the wedding experience. (The wedding was an experience in its own right, so I'll post about that separately - hopefully with pictures.)
On our third day in Jaipur, we had the opportunity to watch - and participate in - an elephant polo match. This was one of the highlights of our trip to Jaipur. As Ritchie described it, elephant polo is a game dreamed-up by a mad man. Who else would think that massive, slow-moving animals would be good sportsman? We sat on the back of elephants and held onto a rope with one hand and a very long - and heavy - polo stick with the other. The elephant driver sat in front and steered the beast by kicking it behind the ears. The elephants lumbered slowly from one end of the field to the other, while the players tried to hack at a soccer ball with the heavy polo sticks. Onlookers sat under a white tent sipping tea and eating little finger sandwiches while uniformed servers brought cold drinks - it all felt very colonial and something that I'll likely never do again. Unless, of course, anyone knows of any elephant polo leagues looking for players in Seattle.
On the fourth day, we rested. Sightseeing and weddings are exhausting work! The next day, though, we hired a tuk-tuk to take us to Amber Fort, which is a couple of miles outside of Jaipure. The site is the original seat of the Jaipur Maharajas and much of the palace has been restored. That evening, we caught a flight to Udaipur and so ended our five days in Jaipur.
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