Jaipur

On Friday we were supposed to visit Red Fort in the morning and then go on to our next place, but when we met Rajeev in the morning he asked us if we had seen the papers that morning. We said no and he told us that there had been some violence the night before between the Muslims and the police and that it wasn’t safe for us to be in Agra anymore so we would have to skip Red Fort. He said some people were killed and that we should leave Agra as soon as possible. He also said Agra is a little more dangerous because it’s in a state where there a lot of Muslims and that once we got back to Rajasthan it would be safe again because it’s all Hindu.

We got on the road again and it took about 4 hours to drive to Jaipur. Rajeev is really good about stopping for tea and coffee and toilets but Katy and I know it’s because he wants to have a cigarette.

We got to Jaipur late in the afternoon so we spent the rest of the day shopping. Jaipur is famous for gemstones so Rajeev took us to his favorite place. I bought pendent made out of tender opal. At the gemstone place, we met a girl from New York who had just come from a textile place where they do block printing and said she got a great deal on a bunch of fabric. So we went over there next and picked out some fabric to have stamped and eventually made into curtains or something. I also bought a cut bedspread which is a piece of fabric with cut out designs on it overlaid and hand stitched onto another piece of fabric. Because it’s all hand done, depending on the intricacy of the pattern, it takes about 20 days to make.

After shopping we asked Rajeev his suggestions on where we should go for dinner. He said he would take us to a place with good food and a dancing baby. In actuality, the restaurant had dancing ladies, not a dancing baby, but it was still very entertaining. They danced and balanced stuff on their heads and even stood on a bed of nails at one point. And Rajeev was right, the food was also good.

Back at the hotel that night we had our first experience with an aspect of India that we would soon realize is very common: random power outages. The first one happened before we went to bed and didn’t last very long so it wasn’t a big deal. The next one happened around 2am and we both woke up sweating. But the thing was, the power was only out in our room. We went down to the front desk and they couldn’t fix it so we had to sleep in the room next door until our power was fixed. Not a good night’s sleep.

The next day we went to Amber Fort, a little ways out of town. Rajeev dropped us off and we hired a guide to take us around. All the major tourist sites offer audio guides for around the same price as a real person, but if you have 2 people it’s usually a better deal to get the human guide. And audio guides can’t take pictures for you.

Amber Fort was huge and impressive and our guide was good. On the way out, there were 2 guys playing flutes and snake charming a cobra. I was instructed by my mother to stay away from cobras, but how often am I in India? So Katy and I both got to wear their turbans and pet the cobra while it was mesmerized by the flute playing. During my turn I felt like it was swaying in my direction and looking at me weird so I petted quickly and got the heck out of the area.

Next Rajeev stopped so we could take pictures of the Water Palace. You can’t go inside because people live there I think. Then we went to City Palace and looked around. Rajeev took us back to our hotel to rest in the afternoon and then took us to pick up our stamped fabric. Having a driver is pretty nice…something I could get used to.