Day 83 - Jaipur, India

Day 83 – His

 

Apparently there is a nine day music festival going on. I only found this out at two in the morning. The music we heard last night was from the festival and it went on and on ..... and on. It was about midnight when I got up and went out onto the roof balcony for a bit of relief from it. It was there that I found out it was all part of this festival. Our guide was there having a drink with a few of the guys from our group and he told me. Apparently it will go on all night – or so he said and from my experience of it that was most certainly true. Our room, though lovely is right by the restaurant and it sounds as if the musicians were in the room with us. They have their instruments amplified so much it is shaking the windows. About four I tried stuffing my ears with toilet paper. Finally I fell asleep around five – which was good apart from the fact that we had to get up at six thirty to go to the Amber Palace.

Breakfast was a dreary affair of hanging my head over a cup of coffee and trying to prise my eyes open even though we were having breakfast on the roof terrace and the view was spectacular.  We set off the fort – which is the main attraction around here at about eight and arrived twenty minutes later.

The fort is a kind of Indian great wall and the structure marches for kilometres in all directions. To give you an idea of what it’s like – if it weren’t for the crenulations the place would look Moroccan and if it weren’t for the wall the landscape would look Mediterranean.

The place feels older than the red fort in Agra and more lived in but is pretty much the same – apparently they were built around the same time – only one by a maharajah and the other by an emperor.

We spent quite a few hours there and ended up in a very westernised coffee shop in the castle grounds sipping a very nice coffee and looking out at the village of Amber that surrounds the castle. It could be that I was so tired that I consider that to be a highlight of the morning. After leaving the shop we dropped in at a small art gallery in the grounds that was displaying local artists’ modern interpretation of classic Indian art – it was pretty cool and I was reminded of a friend of mine from years back – a guy called Ash – who was doing something very similar but in Stockton on tees – his work was good but didn’t really translate very well from Jaipur to the north east of England.

We drove back via some castle in a lake where we stopped to take scenic photos but actually i just wanted to get back and have a sleep. On arrival at the hotel we discovered that our guide had arranged for us to change rooms – so we have some hope of sleeping tonight – he’s a really nice guy – even so, we fell asleep for a couple of hours at least. It was just impossible to keep our eyes open.

 

Day 83 – Hers.

Well, we’ve certainly had a cultural experience here in Jaipur – front row, dress circle for a music festival that lasted all night long.   I walked around the magnificent Amber Palace this morning in a daze.   The walls of the old city climb the crests of the surrounding hills in a way that is very reminiscent of the Great Wall of China – though, as Rob mentioned, the landscape is dry Mediterranean.  The dry heat here is quite a relief after the extreme humidity we have faced for much of our journey.  The dust is still quite cloying, though.

Our new room in the palace hotel is not nearly as nice as our original suite – but, to be honest, all we plan to do in it is sleep – and since it is at the front of the hotel, well away from the festival, I have high hopes!

After our midday nap, we lunched on provisions in the room and then went out into the old city to stroll around.  Dinner was the touristy version of the street food we had for lunch yesterday – from a quite intriguing hotel deli sort of place.  Half of our group went to see the latest Bollywood movie and then were going out for dinner after that.  In our dog-tired state, we just managed to stagger back to the hotel not long after dark, shower and read a bit - until we just couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer.