Jaipur: Radjastan's pink city and surroundings

The next day the time to explore the city was quite tight, as we only had one day and lot's of places to visit. They are all scattered around the city, and we decided to hire an auto rickshaw for the hole day to save up the time we would have spent on bargaining. 20 min bargaining, 500Rs (about 6 Euros) for the whole day and we were good to go. Our rickshaw turned out to be Nepalese and very shy; huge difference with Indians.
Since Amber fort was an absolute "must see", we started with that. The fort is 14 km outside of town, and while on the way, we got to see the less touristic places. First there were quite respectable neighborhoods,

but after we passed the gates to the old pink city...

...the city changed

On the way  we also saw our first cow eating from the garbage. First, but by far not the last as it turned out to be.

Once at the fort, we could choose from two options either to hire an elephant to take us up, or to do the short climb. We choose the second and in 10 minutes time were in front of the gate. The climb wasn't as challenging as we thought, and a much better option, as we got to see some great views of the fort's walls and defense system.
The fort is very beautiful and creates quite an impression.

Inside, the fort has very well preserved beautiful decorations and creates a feeling that you are in one of the Indian fairy tales.

After the Amber Fort we decided to visit another fort in the neighborhood called Nahargarth. It supposed to have the great view of the Jaipur city and it did indeed. In the fort itself, there is not too much to do, just to see the walls, the palace...

... and to walk around admiring the views. Here, the monkeys just as tourists, watch the city’s life bellow going by.

Altogether, the condition of the fort is much poorer than that of the Amber Fort.

Overall, there are three forts in Jaipur and each has its own special ambience, but we decided to skip the third one, Jaigarh Fort, because of the limited time we had. We did get some pics of it from a distance though.

On the way back to the city we stopped by at the lake with a palace half covered with water in the middle of it. Not the most spectacular place to visit, but somehow it is called a "must see" in all the guides. There were also boat rides available, but we felt that viewing it from a distance was good enough.

After the forts, which took us all morning and first half of the afternoon, we got back into town. Jaipur is commonly called the pink city because the whole old part of it is pink in and out.

As all main sights are closing at 16:30, we only had the time left to see the very pink Wind Palace…

… to snick a pic of the city palace…

… and to see the monkeys walking the roof tops of the buildings as it started to get dark.

When back at the hotel, we still had to solve the problem with our train tickets being waitlisted. After checking the latest status on-line, we had one ticket confirmed from first class, one first class ticket still waitlisted and both second class tickets confirmed. So getting another set of tickets was a good idea after all; this way we were sure that we can board the train.

An hour before the train departure we got to the station where we met an Italian couple with both tickets waitlisted. They were completely stressed out, since with tickets on waitlist it is not allowed to go on the train and they really had to be in Jaisalmer the next day. As we had one confirmed ticket too many, we suggested that they try and get in using ours. This way they would at least have one sit and we will get some of our money back. The tricky part was to convince the train master to first let them use our ticket (because the tickets are not transferable and name specific) and then to make him allow the guys to sleep together in one berth. Hence, quite a challenge! The train was only stopping for 10 minutes, and by the time we managed to find the train master the train already started to depart with the Italian couple already boarded. It took four of us and a local Indian lady from the compartment next door to finally succeeded J

The result: I slept in the first class with Dima’s 1st class ticket, Dima slept in the second class with his own second 2^nd class tickets and the Italian guys slept together on my place with my 2^nd class ticket! If we will get a refund for my 1st class ticket that remained waitlisted, it will be a miracle.

Anyway, hopefully this will remain the most complicated part of our trip and the rest will be much smoother. :-)

Conclusion: spending half of the day with our elephant was great, and very recommended. We saw most of the places in Jaipur, and liked the town. It was definitely different than Delhi, but still in a very nice way. I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get to see the town in the evening, but it wasn't a big deal.  

Next: Jaisalmer - desert's golden city