[6 months later…] Let me start by saying that Jaipur was my absolute favorite weekend in India. Especially since we hang out with other people who travel a lot, I’ve come to realize that “favorites” like this are obviously subjective, but also somewhat random. When discussing different project locations, some people vehemently hate a place and others say it’s their favorite! So maybe we got lucky with weather or our fabulous tour guide or whatever, but I think it’s safe to say: Jaipur is a cool place.
As always, we arrived late on Friday, so we didn’t do much. But our hotel, ITC Rajputana, was amazing! The decor of the lobby, rooms, restaurants and pool were stunning.
I booked a full day with a tour guide through Janu Private Tours, and we loved every second. Our guide, Raj, collected us in the morning and quickly began teaching us about the city. Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan, which means “land of kings,” and it was the first planned city in India.
Jai Singh II built and established the city in 1727 and named it after himself! He constructed a wall around the city with seven spectacular gates into the city. Our first stop was to see one of the gates!
Originally painted yellow, the city was repainted pink by Sawai Ram Singh in preparation for the Prince of Wales’ arrival. As such, Jaipur is widely known as “the pink city of India.”
Raj gave us fresh flower garlands as we approached our next stop, Hawa Mahal. Called the “wind palace,” this structure was built in 1799 to allow the royals to view the happenings on the street below without being seen.
Next up, Raj took us to Jantar Mantar, which is a collection of 19 different astronomical instruments. Completed in 1734, Jantar Mantar means “calculating instrument.” Now this might sound super dorky, but it was so cool!
The instruments measure different things by the placement of the sun and the shadows it creates. For example, this is the world’s largest stone sundial, showing the exact time:
Other instruments display the time in different ways or display completely different information, such as sunrise, sunset, time of year and more!
From Jantar Mantar, we could walk to City Palace. This giant complex is mostly a museum now, but it still contains the royal residence.
King Jai Singh II (the same king that established Jaipur) developed the plans and ordered construction for the main structures of City Palace. Subsequent kings have continued to add to the beauty.
We loved walking through all the cool architecture and designs. How about this amazing peacock gate?!
Through the gate, we saw the Hall of Public Audience. This gorgeous pavilion houses yet another Guinness World Record holder: the largest sterling silver vessels. Made by melting down 14,000 silver coins, these bad boys are HUGE!
From this vantage point, you can also see the royal residence (Chandra Mahal), which remains painted yellow.
Many of the coolest parts of the palace cannot be photographed. I really enjoyed the gorgeous dining hall for special events, and Meadows was obsessed with the weapons museum.
Before leaving City Palace, we stopped in Mubarak Mahal, which means the Auspicious Palace. The building is now a museum of royal textiles. The most interesting artifacts were the clothes of Sawai Madhosingh I, who was 7’ tall and 4’ wide. Weighing around 550lbs, his clothes were pretty unbelievable!
We stopped for an exquisite late lunch before Raj took us to the Amber Fort (or Amer Fort). The fort was built in 1576 high up on a hill.
We began in the public courtyard and worked our way up the stairs to the more private areas.
Amber Fort offers so much in terms of architectural detail and planning that I could write about for pages and pages. I’ll limit myself to the highlights though 🙂 I loved the Public Audience Hall, which features 27 pillars with scallops overhead.
From this hall, you can see the private gardens and the hugely long wall.
In order to enter the private palaces, you must walk through the Ganesh Gate. Ganesh is the Hindu god portrayed as an elephant head on a body with a large belly and he is said to remove all obstacles, and we saw him a lot throughout Jaipur. We saw his image overhead as we admire the gorgeous gate.
My favorite part of Amber Fort was easily the Sheesh Mahal (mirror palace). Standing inside this area was so spectacular because the light dances around the tiny pieces of mirror. The photos hardly do this area justice.
We concluded our tour walking around and soaking up the beauty.
Before leaving, Raj explained that the final courtyard (not photographed) was where the king would visit his queens and mistresses. The courtyard allowed access to the surrounding bedrooms with common corridors so no one could see which woman he decided to see and when.
Raj drove us to our final tourist stop of the day, Jal Mahal (water palace). The palace was built in the 18th century in such a way that the first four floors remain underwater when the lake is full. The fifth floor, however, rises from the water to be viewed from the shore!
Since we hit all of the major tourist attractions, we opted to do some shopping with Raj the rest of the day. Jaipur has a great market for gemstones and diamonds, so we had to stop at a couple of jewelry shops!
We also popped in a textile market. We learned all about how they employ a technique called block printing. By hand, they use stamps to layer on a design. Each stamp is a different color and a different piece of the larger picture. Typically, these are larger floral prints, so textile experts line them up over and over again on a single piece of fabric to make one giant pattern. (As you can tell, I got really into hitting the stamp as hard as I could!)
With our shopping concluded, we enjoyed a happy hour at the hotel (complete with local dancing) and then dinner.
The next morning, we were picked up for one of my favorite excursions ever: a day at Elefantastic! I found an elephant sanctuary where Meadows and I could spend an entire day with an elephant. When we arrive, we met our sweet Chaanda (which means “moon” in Hindi). The first meeting is important; she needed to get accustomed to our scents and we needed to pet her and stay close to reassure her that we were trustworthy.
The first order of business was to get our girl fed. Her handler showed us that we needed to bundle up greens in a particular fashion and then speak to her as we handed her the bundle. She would pick up the bundle with her trunk, swing it and play with it a bit and finally put it in her mouth to eat. Mealtime was so much fun, and girlfriend can really eat!
Our next activity was to decorate Chaanda. Elefantastic makes sure to use organic paints that won’t harm the animals. Honestly, painting her thick and sometimes hairy surface was much harder than it looked! But, this was an exercise in branding, so we persevered 🙂
As soon as my masterpiece was complete, we walked Chaanda outside to wash her. What a bummer! As “Carpenter Diem” faded from her massive body, we delighted in watching her play in the water and drink it up. She even spun around to make the process easier!
I guess you could say bath time continued, as Meadows and I hopped up on Chaanda’s bare back for more splashing in the water. She seemed to think it was particularly funny to spray us!
Completely drenched, we went for a walk (still on her back) for the three of us to dry off. Elephant riding can be pretty inhumane, but the worst part of it is the uncomfortable seat the elephant has strapped to it. Riding bareback is much more comfortable for the elephant, however Meadows found it to be pretty unpleasant! He got down before the walk ended.
At the end of the day, we said goodbye to our sweet elephant friend and left for the airport. I’d like to note that I was extremely cautious in booking the elephant excursion. I’ve read about similar attractions that claim to be sanctuaries but are actually quite abusive to the animals. We did our due diligence to ensure we were supporting a business that promotes elephants and their proper treatment. After working as an elephant rider at Amber Fort and seeing the elephant abuse, Rahul started Elefantastic in 2012. Even if I arrived skeptical, the elephants convinced me that all was well. They flapped their ears and wagged their tail, indications of happy elephants. Similarly, Rahul explained that one particular elephant (not ours) was his childhood friend from birth. We watched her reach for Rahul with her trunk anytime he was within reach!