India Pt 2

Siobhan repeatedly tells me she hates Jaipur. She says it's a big filthy, overcrowded, chaotic mess of a city and she hates it. She never misses an opportunity to tell me that she hates it and can't believe she's going back there. So naturally I have high hopes. Jaipur is known as the pink city, as the city has a pink theme if seen from the walls of the Amber fort. The fort is a little ways out of town, and is a great big museum. There's not much in the fort itself as the fort is the museum piece. There are a few rooms with lovely mosaic or faded painting on the walls, but for the most part it's a pretty sparse affair. There is a long wall around the area of the fort, which could be easily confused for the great wall of China if you didn't know the locale. The views of the town and the countryside from the high points of the fort are pretty spectacular, but everyone says the fort is breathtaking, and it's just not. I suppose I have seen enough forts throughout Europe and North Africa to compare it to, and to me, it's just a fort. There are actually 3 forts on 3 separate hilltops all right next to one another, that's a pretty cool sight, especially with that great wall running up and down the hills between them. There is the mirrored hall, a room which does what it says on the tin, with typical Mogul architecture and design throughout. There are also the touts who seemingly understand enough English to give you a guided tour of the fort, but not quite enough to understand the meaning of the word "no". In fact there are touts almost everywhere in India, ready to give you guided tours of everything, autorickshaw trips everywhere (via their cousin's shop, of course), sell you everything you want or not, get you hotel rooms in places you don't want to be, etc. They almost ruin every site with their persistance and sheer number. As soon as you've said no to one, there's another with the same offer, like you've been passing up all these other offers because you've been waiting for him alone. It's difficult to enjoy seeing much of anything with the constant annoyance and pushiness. There's no refusal as far as they are concerned, it's just a matter of finding your price, and they will find it if they have to follow you throughout the whole site. You could admire the desire to make a sale if you weren't so pissed off. Jaipur itself really is quite revolting, again the garbage, especially when it rains. The rain seems to wash all the garbage and filth, cowshit and scabby rats up to street level. I have a natural fear of disease and the word cholera runs through my head with alarming regularity. I am glad that Dominic is either in his stroller or on my shoulders, because I don't know what that water that fills the streets is carrying, but I have a fantastic imagination. There is a relatively new temple in the city called the Narayan and Laxmi temple, and it's a really lovely building with a very relaxed atmosphere about it, a very welcome break from the craziness of the Jaipur streets. Again it is white marble with beautiful carvings of gods and philosophers and even Christian saints and Jesus himself puts in an appearance on the exterior columns.The inside is again quite large and sparse with great big full colour statues of the title gods, and smaller, less significant deities dotted throughout. The big draw to the city other than the amber fort is the Hawa Mahal, an enormous screenlike building designed to allow the women of the royal household to look out to the street and enjoy festivals and such without being themselves seen. his a remarkable example of Mogul architecture and seemingly quite out of place in this city. I recommend having a look at some pictures of it, it seems like a big honeycomb. Another major attraction is an outdoor observatory, the Jantar Mantar ( no, really), a series of big outdoor astronomical tools built from stone and marble, and used for telling the earth's position in the solar system, the time of day using a colossal sundial which is apparently accurate to about 2 seconds, an enormous sextant, and various devices still used for divining the best days to get married. The city palace is also close by, a fortified series of buildings once used by royals, now another tourist draw and fantastic shopping opportunity, or so they would have you believe. All of thes attractions are in the old city, right in the middle of a series of small shops which line both sides of the streets, in parallel and perpenicular directions. So many shops in fact, one can't imagine there could be anyone living in the old city. But there are inhabitants of the old city. Whole herds of cattle roam the streets, in most cases just slowing traffic, making everyone drive around them, but sometimes there are so many of them just lying in the middle of the road that they completely stop traffic and have to be gingerly moved along. Those are the animals you expect in India. Noone said anything about the ridiculous number of dogs of wandering the streets. Most are harmless, but there's always one mean one who barks at you and startles the boy. there are also great big goats, quite the largest goats I've ever seen, and a good number of them too. I wasn't expecting the pig walking down the street like he owned it though. That was a surprise. Once again, the city had offered up everything there was to see in a day and a half, so we book out of there as fast as we can, having had more than enough of the overpowering rubbish and refuse. The next stop is what I am assured is a small, picturesque town with a living fort called Jaisalmer.