Jaipur & Udaipur - State of Rajasthan, India
/We arrived in Jaipur in the evening, still super excited about our fantastic luck with the tigers. Because we wanted to fit a lot of India into the time we had before being back in Delhi, our itinerary didn't leave much time for relaxing. We woke up in the morning and began our sightseeing tour of Jaipur, a very remarkable city. It is commonly referred to as the Pink city, due to still-on-the-books laws that require the old city to be painted in the same shade of pink. This is due to the pink sandstone that was originally used on many of the forts and palaces in the region.
Our day was packed full of sightseeing, and we took in as much of the city as possible in our time here. We saw the Amer fort, which housed the royal palace before it moved to Jaipur proper. The royal family still lives in the current palace, City Palace, though they have ceded all authority to the local government. We also visited that current home, which has been partially converted to a museum, though the royal family and all of the royal staff still lives on the premises. In addition, we visited a really incredible observatory, which houses several remarkably accurate sundials that were constructed in the 16th century. We also saw both the Wind Palace and the Water Palace. Unfortunately these are not open to the public but we were able to stop by and see them from the outside.
After our fairly rapid fire day in Jaipur, we flew to Udaipur, another city in Rajasthan. Udaipur is located to the south west of Jaipur, and has a completely different feel. It is green, and mountainous, and a lot less densely populated. It was a really nice change from Jaipur and Delhi. We had only 2 nights here again, so our schedule was packed full. On our first day, we had a couple of hours to recharge in our hotel before heading into the historic district. Much of the movie Octopussy was filmed here, so the James Bond fan in me loved seeing some of the filming locations. There is a different royal family that calls Udaipur home, and while they still live in the lake side palace here, much of it has been converted to a museum that is open to the public. After touring the palace, we walked through a small bit of the old district and had our first look at a Hindu temple up close. They are truly remarkable works of architecture and artistry.
Our second day in Udaipur was spent driving a couple hours to see the old hilltop city and fort of Chittorghar. While mostly ruins now, this used to be the royal capital of the region, until the 16th century when it was overrun, and the capital then moved to the palace we toured in Udaipur. The palace section of the city was very much destroyed, leaving only ruins, but the temples were in much better condition. Many monkeys now call the ruins home it was really cool to see them living and playing in ancient ruins. It felt very much out of a movie. We loved seeing all of the historic and cultural sights while in Rajasthan, but were also super excited to fly south to Kerala, which will be described in our next post!
