Day 8-10: Jaipur
"Only the best impressions"
So this is Jaipur, the Pink City.
It's a little hard to love immediately; big and sprawling, a working city. I'm reluctant to be too negative about crowded, dirty places - after all, we knew what we were getting into in coming here - but at the same time there's little sense in wide-eyed insistence that every place is wonderful. The air is unbreathable here and it's done a number on our lungs, we're hacking and coughing for days afterwards.
The place is sort-of pink, though.
However, a bit of determination was more than rewarded with a few memorable highlights. The 16th century Amber Fort is rightly acclaimed for its scale and architecture and we spent a day strolling around the Tiger Fort and Floating Palace, too - all very interesting and impressive monuments to the Maharajas' wealth and need for thick walls and high ramparts: Rajasthan means 'Land Of Kings' and the 200 or so maharajas seem to have been in a near-permanent state of war with each other as well as the Mughal invaders.
A standout site is Jantar Mantar, built in 1735 to accommodate the Rajput king Sawai Jai Singh's obsession with science and astronomy. It's a large open campus full of towering stone structures, deep marble bowls and cantilevered iron gyroscopes designed to identify and track the movements of the heavens. It includes the worlds largest sundial, 90 feet tall and tells time accurate to two seconds over 300 years. Make no mistake, this is a place for nerds. I couldn't be happier.
The thing I'll take away from Jaipur most, though isn't the stunning buildings or the choking air but the fleeting friends we made; an Indian couple, farmers from Bangalore, who were on a short vacation after a good year. Despite having not much language in common we spent most of the day with them, splitting tuktuk and fares and sharing bilingual tour guides. They went out of their way to ensure we felt comfortable and welcomed in India,enthusiastically proud of their country and insistent that we leave with only the best impressions. It's a small thing but was a great reminder that the constant hassling, hawking and incessant sales pitch is of course, a completely unfair representation of an entire people.
Jaipur not a place to linger. A quick stop here and we're off again, our midnight train only three hours delayed. Jaiselmer next, the Golden City. Exotic, no?
"Let me say four people in the back of a tuk tuk is no mean feat"
Much like the landscape, our limited experience in India has been a bit undulating. The baptism of mystical fire in Pushkar, the serene, often-time silence of Udaipur and now the inescapable and unbreathable tumult of Jaipur.
I should begin by saying that our trip to Jaipur has been bookended by train timings of an inconvenient kind. A 6am arrival and a 2.30am departure; but in between times and in between bouts of uncontrollable coughing NB. We either have TB or are reacting poorly to the pollution, Jaipur gave us some pretty memorable moments.
Its clearly a city growing fast and like much of India that has led to an enormous and unavoidable pollution problem. Jaipur sights are scattered around much more than Udaipur’s and as such we fond ourselves in the back of rickshaws far more, with eye watering and breath taking results.
The air is dense and hangs heavy, blurring the skyline; and even when up high, as we were at both Nagargh and Amer Forts, it can play fast and loose with your lung capacity. (As we write this, news reports tell us Delhi is in a state of alert with schools closed and a national shortage of anti pollution masks. Its estimated that a day of breathing in Delhi’s dust (dust plus) is the equivalent of a 50 a day habit. I’m going to say this is a 50 a day Superkings habit). And it feels not dissimilar in this capital.
But some happy poked through the pink haze in the following forms.
Having shunned Uber in London, our reluctance to expose our lungs to any more of this particular air, saw me download the app (Jacko fell over from the shock) and digitally hail us a cab up to Nagargh (or Tiger) Fort. A few centimetres on the Uber map is actually a very long and winding 45 minute drive (reflected also in the long and winding fair...) but we were rewarded in kind by some higher altitude views, funny monkeys and a (stop being cynical and suck up the 30 rupee donation) informative guide around the Queens (note the plural) palace.
FACT: The King had nine Queens in total, all with separate living quarters and secret passages for him to get to each sans any awkward late night jealousies. Most fascinating was a whispering arch, circa 6 metres end to end which servants would use to speak across rooms so as to not wake their sleeping mistress.
Two hours later, our taxi driver has waited to take us back down the big hill and onto the floating palace (actually ‘onto’ isn’t really a fair description as you can’t actually get anyway near it so onto wasn’t an option). Which left us mulling on the roadside a further trip to the ‘must see’ Amer Fort. As we deliberated by an auto-rickshaw stand we took the same as a nearby Indian couple to opt for the out of town sunset option and take the back seat of the tuk tuk. After a brief ‘discussion’ it was agreed we’d share a ride, jeep up the fortifications and subsequent guided tour – splitting the costs 50/50.
Let me say at this point, four people in the back of a tuk tuk is no mean feat – not least when one of you is 6 ft 2 – so needless to say we soon became close! Our companions for the next two hours were from Bangalore (Bengaluru), in Rajasthan for a 10 day break and intent on taking in the sights much like us. Clearly their English was much better than our non existent Hindi and we learnt about their sons and their studies and his trade as a fertiliser salesman and shop owner.
Shared smiles and moments of mutual appreciation of our special surroundings followed and we left agreeing to also share an autorickshaw back into Jaipur, for them to continue their tourist trail to the City Palace and for us to wend our way (if such as thing is possible in Indian streets) back to the hotel to ready ourselves for our late night train (now 3 hours later than advertised). As we fondly said our goodbyes and went to pay our driver for our share – what happened next brought tears to my eyes and not this time because of the off the chart levels of pollution. Our new friends from Bengaluru wouldn’t accept any money from us, insisting they pay as their guests in India.
I know that moment will stay with me and Jack long after we leave Rajasthan.
I write this as we trundle on train tracks through the Thar desert to our next stop - Jaisalmer – where another fort awaits, this one perched on a hilltop and encased by hundreds of havelis (noble merchants houses of old). I have a feeling I will be happy to call this home for the next few days.