Feeling better the next day, we went to check out the city palace. If you thought, as we did, that this was the royal residence, you’d be wrong. It is an old part of the palace that they don’t use anymore. The “royal residence” is, apparently, the cool part, but it costs $40 (that’s dollars, not rupees) to visit. Needless to say, thus far Jaipur was a bit disappointing. As we left the city palace, we stopped at a chaiwalla to get some tea. While there, we met a rickshaw driver who offered to take us to some sights around the city. We are wary of these guys, but decided to give him a try. He took us to the lake palace, which was beautiful.
And then he took us to the obligatory shop (where all rickshaw drivers take you because if you buy something they get a hefty commission). The shop was interesting because they showed us how they do the Rajasthani block printing. But the sales pressure was high and we barely got out of there with our wallets in tact. We decided to steer clear of rickshaw drivers after that! We just had one last stop to make before we parted ways with our driver. We asked him to take us to a restaurant recommended by Lonely Planet. It was on a rooftop on the fort itself overlooking the city. We thought it’d be cool to check out. We settled in and placed our order. As we waited for our food, Jigar noticed that there was a menu on the wall in Hindi. That menu had different prices on it than the menu we had ordered from, which was in English. He asked the waiter about it. The waiter told him the reason our food was more expensive was that it was “special food”. Jigar told him that we didn’t need any special food, regular food was just fine for us. In the end, we got portions that were half of the size of everyone else in the restaurant – Indian or foreigner. The portions were so small, they had to serve it in different dishes than they used for everyone else. Anway, our visit to Jaipur was not starting out well.
The next day, we finished the walking tour (which involved a large amount of harassment from shopkeepers and rickshawwallas) and decided to take in a movie. The movie theater in Jaipur, called the Raj Mandir, is self proclaimed to be the biggest movie theater in Asia. It has over 1100 seats. While waiting in line, we met two American girls. Christine is working in Delhi for a year for a company that is equipping villages with solar panels so that they have power. Emily was just there for a visit. She was on her way home from working for a hospital in Tanzania for a year. When it turned out that the movie was sold out, we all decided to go hang out together. There weren’t too many options nearby, so we settled for McDonald’s. Jigar and I had been secretly dying to try the McDonald’s masala fries so we didn’t mind. We had our fries and milkshakes and got to know Christine and Emily a bit. Before too long, the manager came over and asked us to sign the guestbook! Who knew McDonald’s had a guestbook?
The next day, we finished the walking tour (which involved a large amount of harassment from shopkeepers and rickshawwallas) and decided to take in a movie. The movie theater in Jaipur, called the Raj Mandir, is self proclaimed to be the biggest movie theater in Asia. It has over 1100 seats. While waiting in line, we met two American girls. Christine is working in Delhi for a year for a company that is equipping villages with solar panels so that they have power. Emily was just there for a visit. She was on her way home from working for a hospital in Tanzania for a year. When it turned out that the movie was sold out, we all decided to go hang out together. There weren’t too many options nearby, so we settled for McDonald’s. Jigar and I had been secretly dying to try the McDonald’s masala fries so we didn’t mind. We had our fries and milkshakes and got to know Christine and Emily a bit. Before too long, the manager came over and asked us to sign the guestbook! Who knew McDonald’s had a guestbook?
We hadn’t given up on the sightseeing yet, so our next stop was Amber Fort. Finally, something beautiful to make our time in Jaipur worthwhile! Amber Fort is on the outskirts of the city. It is a majestic old fort on a hill and you can feel the regal history steeped into the stones. There is another fort even further up the hill called Jaigadh Fort. We spent so long at Amber Fort that they told us not to bother going up the hill. It’s a 20 minute walk up and it’d be closed by the time we got there. The main attraction of the second fort is that it has the largest cannon on wheels in the world. Jigar really wanted to show it to me so we decided to take our chances. We made our trek up the hill and we were rewarded. The guards were kind enough to let us in. We went straight to the cannon (more or less) and watched the sunset from the top of the hill.
After our return to the city from the forts, we decided to give Raj Mandir one more try. This time we got tickets to the movie! We saw Rab ni de Bani Jodi starring Shuh Rakh Khan (also known as SRK). It was a typical, but very cute, hindi movie.
Our last day in Jaipur, we went to Jantar Mantar. Jantar Mantar is a weird place where one of the maharajas built all these crazy astronomical instruments. We had seen so many forts lately and heard so many audio guides that we decided to check out this place on our own. Big mistake! These giant gadgets meant nothing to us. Oh well! We had one more place we wanted to see – the Hawa Mahal. It was a palace built for the queens and other female royalty. Since they observed perda in India (which means women may never be seen), they had to build a place that the women could observe celebrations and festivals without being seen. Hawa Mahal was the answer. It was being renovated so the inside was not particularly beautiful, but we did get a nice view of the city.
Overall, we didn’t particularly enjoy our visit to Jaipur. We stayed to see all the sites so that we never have to go back there again. It was far too touristy and the vendors there are extremely pushy. India has some beautiful places, but the super touristy sites tend not to bring the worst of people. We were ready to visit Jigar’s childhood friend Himanshu in Delhi.
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