After a nice trip organised by our hosts in bikaner, we’ll move by night to our next touristic spot: Jaipur. Although it is a famous place, I found it less interesting than Jodhpur. Tiredness, Bangalore sickness and maybe not being too much in a touristic set of mind have prevented me to enjoy the place as much as one could.

The first thing we’ll do in the early morning will be to try to find a hotel under 300 Rps. Not an easy task. I have been surprised by how much the prices have gone up in the past 2 years, we will only find hotels in the 400 - 600 Rps range, and that is without all the comfort you could expect for this price. We will end up in a 250 Rps bedroom, with a big triple bed, a smelly bath/toilet room, an air cooler that makes any crowded street sound silent in comparison and of course, not a single window. The night will be worse than the one we just had in the bus :/ This “nice” hotel is called “Amit Hotel” on Station Rd.

I think the best way to see Jaipur is by foot, and unfortunatly, given our limited time and Keerthi’s indian nature, we took a rickshaw for the day. You have a lot to see on the side of the streets, many inner courts, a lot of pedestrian bazaars which you simply miss when on rickshaw or bus.

From a purely touristic point of view, we went to Iswari Minar Swarga Sal: a tower from which you get a nice view over the city. We saw as well Jantar Mantar, a garden where you can see various instruments to measure time, star position, sun parameters, … We finished the day with a rush to Ajmer fort for sunset but I could not get any decent picture unfortunatly. The fort looked interesting though and you can get a rather good view over Jaipur during opening times.

After a rather hard night in our 5-star hotel, we took an early bus to Agra: 7 hours, aweful seats but a lot to see during the trip. For example a person selling some product to whiten the teeth (and destroy your mouth at the same time I guess), landscapes, villages, etc. There was also a “funny” race between the bus drivers: the first bus will get the passengers of the next stop. So try to imagine Schumacher driving a big metal box on 4 wheels full of live meat, jumping from one hole to the other, using every part of the road to overtake the other bus in curves, horning at cow carts, etc. And on Schumacher’s left side, hanging from the door or windows, his assistant teasing the other bus’ team. Crazy, really.

… to be continued

- Posted on Saturday 13 May 2006 at 15:46 GMT.
- Tags: India 2006 • India • Jaipur • Rajasthan
- Viewed 10,145 times
- Follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
- You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
- Print This Post