After a 16-hour ‘first class’ train ride from Khajuraho we arrived in Jaipur at 1am feeling pretty grotty and exhausted. Just as well we had decided to splurge on two nights in a reliably clean, comfortable room at an Ibis hotel.
Only a few hours later, we arrived at the nearby Amber fort, feeling refreshed and ready to tick off another of Cindy’s bucket list items; riding an elephant to a palace. The historic hilltop fort is known as THE place to do it, and even though we arrived half an hour before the fort opened there were a few busloads of people lining up ahead of us.
Only a few hours later, we arrived at the nearby Amber fort, feeling refreshed and ready to tick off another of Cindy’s bucket list items; riding an elephant to a palace. The historic hilltop fort is known as THE place to do it, and even though we arrived half an hour before the fort opened there were a few busloads of people lining up ahead of us.
The ride was a lot of fun (despite the crowds and relentless spruikers), offering beautiful views of the palace, fort, lake, gardens and surrounding mountains. The huge palace at the top was just as impressive, although our guide’s thick accent meant we didn’t get the full benefit of his insight.
We spent the rest of the day in Jaipur’s historic walled Pink City. There, we visited the expansive (but we thought not otherwise impressive) City Palace and the beautiful Palace of the Winds, which was designed to allow women to see the outside world without themselves being seen (an architectural feature found in every Rajasthan palace we visited). We also walked through the Jantar Muntar, a well preserved collection of large-scale astrological instruments that were built by a Rajasthani king almost 300 years ago.
To get to our next stop, Jodhpur, we had booked an ‘express’ four-hour train leaving at 6am, this time sitting in third class (the best available at the time we booked). Indian trains, we had already learnt, are famous for being consistently late, and this time it meant we had to endure a further two an a half hours of locals’ most annoying habits (specifically, refusing to use any kind of deodorant, eating pungent food, having no respect for personal space, and, Cindy’s favorite, shamelessly and constantly staring).
Indian trains are also notorious for being difficult to book. In Khajuraho we had queued for half an hour to put our names on a waiting list for a train from Jodhpur to our next stop, Jaisalmer, and when we arrived in Jodhpur we spent almost an hour asking any rail work who would listen (in the end only two people) whether we had managed to get seats. By the time we finally arrived at our guest house, we had decided that we didn’t even want the train tickets any more (even if we could get them), so we were pleased when the owner was able to arrange a private taxi transfer for not much more than the train would have cost.
Eating lunch on the rooftop of our guesthouse, we got our first view of the spectacular Mehrangarh Fort above us. A poster advertising a zipline around the outer walls of the fort caught our eye and a couple of hours later were strapped in for a really memorable and, once we stopped worrying about how weird it was that we weren’t offered helmets, enjoyable experience. The sunset views of the fort and the sea of indigo painted buildings below (Jodhpur is known as ‘the blue city’) were particularly spectacular.
Eating lunch on the rooftop of our guesthouse, we got our first view of the spectacular Mehrangarh Fort above us. A poster advertising a zipline around the outer walls of the fort caught our eye and a couple of hours later were strapped in for a really memorable and, once we stopped worrying about how weird it was that we weren’t offered helmets, enjoyable experience. The sunset views of the fort and the sea of indigo painted buildings below (Jodhpur is known as ‘the blue city’) were particularly spectacular.
Joining us for the zipline were some friends we had met in Mumbai, bumped into on a plane the following day, and finally gotten to know when we by chance were placed on the same table at a Varanasi restaurant. We had a lot in common with these british boys; as well as following a similar path through India, they are also traveling for a year to many of the same countries and are blogging about their adventures. The stark difference is that both of the boys are deaf. Even so, they are still managing to see at least as much as us and are having at least as much fun. We’d highly recommend you check our their inspiring blog here: www.deafontravel.com.
The following day we went back to tour the inner part of the Mehrangarh Fort, aided by an excellent audio guide. We then wandered around the busy downtown bazaar and caught a tuk tuk out to the enormous and luxurious Umaid Bhawan Palace (getting as close as we could without paying $1,500 a night to stay at the palace hotel).
We then jumped in our luxurious (compared to the train) air conditioned private taxi to Jaisalmer. More on that in our next post.