Day 45: Jaipur, Again
Today posed an interesting dilemma. Since the next stop on
our trip (Udaipur) wasn’t reachable by direct flight and only through either
Delhi or Mumbai, we decided to make the trip to Udaipur by train overnight
(more on the actual train journey later). This particular train was scheduled
to leave Jaipur at 10:30 PM. We had to checkout at 1 PM. The problem was how to
fill the time in between, and while we had no solid ideas, this gave us a good
excuse to go to places reachable by (air conditioned) car. The only real
highlight we hadn’t yet seen in Jaipur was the Amer fort itself (we ‘saw’ it in
the Sound & Light show, but from afar), and being that it was about a 40
minute drive there and 40 minutes back, it worked as a perfect way to spend
some time.
We left the hotel early at 9:00 AM, hoping to get there
early and get back early enough to still check out in time and reach our lunch
spot (Handi restaurant) by 1:30, when our car service ended. The drive out to
the Amer fort was uneventful, as this time we weren’t whisked away to visit
some tourist trap with overpriced goods and fly-ridden restaurants, but taken
calmly down to the Fort. The only strange occurrence was the cab driver
pre-booking a guide for our tour. We were quite skeptical of this, but when he
picked up the guide, the man spoke good English, looked legitimate and when we
reached the Fort he seemed to know people, proving to us that he wasn’t some
strange outsider who didn’t know bunk about the place he was giving a tour of.
The Fort was a bit less grand during the day, but since weddings are at night,
who cares?
There are a few ways to go up to the fort. First, you can
walk. Considering who we are and the heat, this wasn’t a particularly likely
option. Next, for 150 rupees, you can have a car drive you up to the entrance
of the Fort. Finally, you can ride an elephant, which costs 950 rupees. This
seemed to be by far the most popular option, and because the ride is quite
lengthy, it wasn’t even that pricey. We chose the elephant, and soon we were
seated on our elephant, painted in the normal Indian way, and soon after we
started our trek up the hill to the Fort base. It is quite a stunning sight to
see elephants ahead of you, behind you and across from you, all while on your own
elephant. It was a great experience, only sullied by our extremely moody
elephant. The elephant always wanted to overtake the ones in front of it,
sometimes turning that desire into a successful action. Also, because of the
heat, the elephants took to spraying itself with water from its trunk. All the
elephants did this, but ours did it more and more violently, and undoubtedly
the spray would go around the head and hit us anywhere from the face to the
foot. We were told that it was just water, but all along I had the feeling that
that particular response is just to assuage the passengers.
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| One of the few elephants our one didn't stop to have a chat with. |
We finally reached the top and got our guide to take some
pictures for us, a sad but common circumvention of the protocol where hired
photographers take pictures and then sell them to you (we did end up buying one
of those). We disembarked from the elephant in the entry courtyard, and made
our way up to the Fort. The entrance to the fort was adorned with a frescoed
elephant, a nice little introduction to a very nice building. The fort itself
was really just a large courtyard broken into three distinct sections which
served as the living quarters for the Raj and his two wives during the three
seasons. The Monsoon, Winter and Summer palaces all had nice little features to
increase/decrease the heat with built in cooling and heating systems. The best
was probably the winter palace, which was basically a room covered with small
mirrors on the outside and inside. The guide was good and efficient, and the
tour also gave us some great views of the land underneath, and the nearby
Jagarh Fort, home to what they claim to be the world’s longest cannon. When we
were done, we met our driver at the top (you can’t take the elephant down the
hill), and left Amer Fort behind, finishing up our sightseeing in Jaipur.
We drove back into
town and checked out of the hotel, as the amiable cab driver convinced us to
take his services for the full day, giving us the comfort of an air-conditioned
van until we had to leave for the train. We returned to the Old City Bazaars
for more shopping (sadly, no coasters for me). First was lunch, where Handi
looked like a hole-in-the-wall place, and with the flies buzzing around, my Mom
was against going there. Instead, we went next door, back to Copper Chimney,
which was as decidedly average the second time around as it was the first.
After lunch we went back out to the bazaars for more shopping (there really is
little else to do, but the shopping is good anyway in Jaipur) until my Mom get
tired from the heat and we sought the cool comfort of LMB. Yes, we were
basically doing a replay of yesterday’s afternoon, but sometimes you do the
same thing over again because it was good the first time. This time LMB was
more of a snack than a meal, so I got a dosa and a banana lassi (surprisingly good),
while she got Jelabis and Fresh Lime Soda, the most uniquely refreshing Indian
treat.
After the shopping reached its conclusion (and only because my
Mom grew concerned over we had the spare weight in our luggage to take the
stuff, not because there was any shortage of stores), we went back to the van
and headed off to our dinner spot, The Spice Court. It came from a
recommendation from the driver, who told us about a good non-veg restaurant in
a courtyard near the Train Station, but without telling us the name. In the meantime,
I looked up some restaurants in the Lonely Planet book and was about to tell my
Mom that we should go to Spice Court, but for some reason decided against it,
trusting the driver’s place. In the end, his place of choice and mine were one
in the same. Spice Court is an idyllic little restaurant built in the courtyard
of a hotel, with indoor and outdoor seating. Since it was night and as there
was live entertainment going on outside, we chose to sit outside. The menu was
typical Rajasthani food, and we ordered a Moghlai Chicken Curry and a Lamb
Kebab dish. The lamb was extremely good but even more extremely spicy, so in
fear of potentially being sick on the train (not a good thing given the state
of Indian train bathrooms), we didn’t finish it, but the Chicken Curry portion
was large enough to fill both of us (a large bottle of beer helped). We had
time to kill so we sat under the Jaipuri moonlight listening to nice, if a
little too loud, music. These little moments are the times that you are glad
you are on vacation, thousands of miles away eating nice food in an open
courtyard.
The beginning of the train journey was one of the times that
you are wishing you were no longer on vacation, especially when that vacation
includes a trip on an Indian train. Train travel in India is now cheap enough
that almost anyone can travel on the train in some capacity. Air travel is now
cheap enough that almost all middle-class people can travel by plane. This
leaves a strange sector of people that take the train, but also leads to the
train stations being some of the most decrepit places in India. The whole
Jaipur station smelled like a urinal trough. There are hoards of vagrants littered
around the station platform. The train, with no explanation whatsoever, came
about half an hour late, so we had to stand amongst all this squalor even
longer than what was necessary.
The worst part was our tickets had one person comfirmed in 1st
AC (the best cabin – but really nothing special), and the other confirmed in 3rd
AC (like 1st AC, but six to a room instead of four), with the 2nd
also being waitlisted on 1st AC. This opened up a score of issues as
to how we would contact each other when we arrived in Udaipur? How I would get the
luggage out in time? Who would sleep where? Thankfully these questions were all
answered as Udaipur was the last stop on the train, allowing us to take as much
time as we want to get out of the train. Then we were given a gift from God as
the 2nd ticket was confirmed and we could be together in 1st
AC. When the train arrived, we hurriedly entered into our cabin, wanting to
close our eyes and escape the fact that we were traveling this way. I should
mention that this is my perspective of the whole situation. I love aviation in
all its forms, from airports and planes, and after this train ride, I love
planes even more.
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| This fort is from Centuries ago, and it is about 100x more modern than the Jaipur Train Station |
