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



Jaipur: up-close and personal with Elephants!

From Delhi, our next destination was the pink city of Jaipur. The hotel we booked turned out to be a very charming one, with a great rooftop terrace/restaurant, city view and our room in a quite roof corner.

Since we arrived at night, an early start that we were planning to make wasn't happening, and we decided to take a slow day. We already made the arrangements to spend the afternoon at the elephant sanctuary, so we decided to concentrate on getting our train tickets in order for the next day. When booking the train tickets from home, the Jaipur-Jaisalmer ones were the only waitlisted tickets we got, so full of hopes, we went to the train station. In India, the train ticket system works in mysterious ways, where only a general quota of tickets is available to the public. But there other hidden quotas as well, like tourist, emergency and VIP, from which you still have a chance to get your tickets confirmed.
Following instructions on indiamike.com we went to the foreign tourist office. The guy working their was half a sleep and was not amused when we showed up. Reluctantly, he advised us to go to the reservation office and try to solve our problem with them.

We especially loved the note that the Freedom Fighters (!) were serviced here as well together with foreigners and handicapped :-) By the way, for large pics just click on the photo.
The woman behind the window wasn't amused either with our request, and told us that the only two things we can do is either sincerely hope that the tickets we already bought will be confirmed 3 hours before departure, or to buy another waitlisted tickets in the lower class, that according to her had a better chance to be confirmed... Awesome choice, right? Well, it seemed to us that with 2 sets of waitlisted tickets we will have a better chance of boarding the train all together, so we bought the additional ones as well. We will know the outcome tomorrow, so stay tuned :-)

When we got back to the hotel, the elephant people where already their waiting and off we went to our fun afternoon at the sanctuary.
Their we met our elephant for the day. Her name is Sibel (or Seabell, not sure about the writing part), she is 28 years old and 12 month pregnant.

First, we fed her, so that she can get use to us and be sure that we are not their to steal her food. Half an hour later we were best friends and she even started to smile :-)

The elephants each has it's own human family - husband, wife and kids - that takes care of her (at the sanctuary all elephants except one are female, because males are aggressive and fight each other). The human family is responsible for the elephant's wellbeing and they all live together 24/7. Apparently, each elephant has a separate huge stable with the keeper's family house attached to it.

There is also a large swimming pool where elephants go to swim in the summer.

Next there was a walk together and on our elephant's bareback. It was a bit scary at first, we had no idea that sitting on an elephant is so high up, but then it became really fun, once we got used to it.

Sibel was very playful and constantly "speaking" to the other elephant, that walked with us. The elephant keeper said that they were best friends and always hanged out together. At some point Sibel started to vibrate like crazy, and we thought that she is having some stomach troubles because of al the food we gave her. It turned out that "vibrating" is one of the ways that elephants talk to each other... I had no idea :-)
When we came back from the walk it was painting time. I got to paint the trunk and Dima the side. This was the result:

As farewell, Dima got a brand new turban...

  and Sibel posed for us one last time :-)

Altogether, it was an awesome afternoon and we had lots of fun. Sibel, we will miss you!

Next: explore Jaipur and find out about the train tickets. Fingers crossed!

Delhi: what to see and what to do

The second day in Delhi we started by a visit to Qutub Complex, one of the UNESCO Heritage Sites. As mentioned in the previous post, once we discovered the metro system, which is very comfortable and simple to use, we decided to stick with it. The stations we saw are all new, impressively big and well decorated. They are in a way similar to the ones in Moscow ((the newer ones that is) and not without a reason - we saw that most of them were built at least partially by the Russian company Metrostroy.

The metro carriages are separate for men and women, but there are some that can be used by everyone. Also at the entrances to the metro there are separate security checks for women and men. 

Once at Qutub Station, it took us a while to find a rickshaw to the complex, as they were all charging ridiculous prices and didn't want to bargain. We didn't feel like walking along the road for almost 2 km, so we gave up and paid the price asked.

The complex itself was very beautiful but crowded, especially with school kids. They all wanted to take a picture with me and were posing non-stop.

We liked the fact that all the school kids were dressed in uniforms. Considering the huge wealth difference and the existence of the castes system, the use of uniforms seems like a great idea to illuminate the differences.

After the Qutub Complex, we made a stop at Humayun's Tomb. A much relaxer place, where you can also just walk around or have a picnic in the park. The main tomb is build in a way that is similar to Taj Mahal, but I guess all the tombs from that period are a bit alike.

One more place that we wanted to visit that day was Aksharhdam Temple, but apparently on Sundays it gets so busy, that it takes a while to get in. We didn't mind at first, but after hearing that we will have to leave all our belongings, including computer, phones, wallets, everything at some cloakroom, we said - no thank you  - and left.

The picks would have been awesome though...

Since all the sights were quite far away from each other, they took us all day to visit. We decided to leave the places we didn't see for the day when we come back to Delhi on December 30. So, it was time to return to the hotel, eat and head out to the station, to catch the evening train to Jaipur. We were warned several times that it is best to get their at least an hour in advance, because it takes a while to find the right platform and train. So we did; we found everything in 5 minutes and had to hang out at the station for the remaining hour. Luckily, Delhi was a starting point for our train and we could board it 45 min before departure.

First impressions of the Indian Railways - the trains are great and very clean, at least as far as the first class goes. We will know more about the second and third class later, as I couldn't buy all the tickets in first, not the confirmed ones. So far, they are much better than the ones in Vietnam and cockroaches free! The peculiar thing was, when we started to move the conductor for our carriage closed the in-between doors on both sides of our carriage. When asked, he explained that it is a security measure... Probably so that the people from general carriages wouldn't get in and steal something.   

We got a nice meal for free and didn't get sick, so the first train experience was a definite success.

Sleeping was pointless, as our train ride was suppose to be only 5 hours, so we decided to use it well and start putting together the pics for the blog.

Conclusion: overall we liked Delhi and saw most of the things we wanted to see (perhaps one more day would have been enough to complete the sightseeing, but even this way, we really didn't have the feeling that we missed out on something). The city has a lot off contrasts to offer and that makes it interesting to visit. Also, it turned out to be quite nice in a general sense and not at all horrible and smelly as we heard. Although, may be the smells were not so bad because it wasn't very hot anymore.

In terms of staying safe - we were feeling perfectly comfortable everywhere and stress free. We didn't feel threatened in any way and also the level of hustle was minimum, surprisingly enough, as we heard different about that as well.  

The biggest inconvenience we had in Delhi was finding places to eat. We didn't want to risk getting sick in the first couple of days, so we were quite picky. There were no decent places to eat near our hotel and the ones recommended on TripAdvisor were scattered all over town. We ended up either eating somewhere at the Connaught Place or taking out Chinese.   

Next stop - Jaipur: up-close and personal with Elephants!