**There's some weird elements of my time in Jaipur that made it deserve its special re-post entry. Namely, this was my first full day touring India that I actually enjoyed my home country. I love traveling to India because I am Indian and I know people who live in Mumbai and Bangalore. If I didn't, I would probably never go to Bangalore, and maybe go to Mumbai but be way more annoyed at the inefficiencies of India. Anyway, my first time really being a tourist in India was in 2001 to visit the Taj Mahal. While the site is great, my main takeaway, to be honest, was the dirtiness of Agra. The second time was in 2011 when we went to Kerala and the backwaters were muddy at best and mucky at worst. But Jaipur, a place I was basically forced to go to... somehow was great. Also hidden in the depths of this post, is me searching for coasters. This was a seminal moment. I had traveled before, but this was the first time I was really in search of a specific item as a curio. It worked - I found some great coasters specifically during our night trip to the Chowki Dadri. A love affair of both coasters and souvenirs from trips in general started this day 10 years back.**
RTW Trip: Day 44 (4/8) - Jaipur
Day 44: Jaipur (couldn’t think of any pun-styled name)
We woke up relatively early on our first full day in Jaipur, trying to do as much as we could before the hot midday sun reared its bright, ugly head. Of course, since the main sites in Jaipur proper only open at 9:00, it is rather hard to do this. Thankfully, the Rajasthan heat was slightly overrated. It was hot,no doubt about it, but considering the lack of humidity, it was far more pleasant than Bangalore, and far more pleasant than Malaysia, Thailand & Cambodia before that. We took a rikshaw to City Palace inside the Old City, separated from the rest of Jaipur by a large pink wall that is impossible to miss. Outside the city Jaipur is actually quite nice, with large streets with fountains and statues placed in the middle of the circles. Inside, Jaipur is a mess of bazaars, with a few sites acting as needles in this haystack of vendors and bargain hunters. Our destination was the relatively quiet part of this area, the cobbled street between the City Palace and the Jantar Mantar.
The City Palace only opened at 9:30. Luckily for us, the Jantar Mantar opened at 9:00, so we had something to do. When we entered we were met by a host of people wanting to be our guide, and from this group we selected at random one man, the first of many guides to come. The Jantar Mantar without a guide would probably have been useless, but with it, we were able to fully appreciate what a weird but interesting place it really is. When you enter, the Jantar Mantar presents itself as a large courtyard with strange structures placed around. The guide quickly explained how Mahraja Sawai Jai Singh was a patron of Mathematics and Astrology, and he created this area with exacting precision to use the sun and stars. All of the objects have some astrologocial purpose, whether they be exact sundials (but they look nothing like the circular sundials that are common throughout the world), or spherical pits to tell what period of the Zodiac we are currently in, or even to find out which constellations are where each night, or even to find out the position of the earth in its rotation around the sun. All of these structures were interesting, and while some were repetitive (as in a few measured the same thing), the guide kept it all moving, and the Jantar Mantar in totality was a pleasant experience.
When we finished the half-hour tour, the City Palace was open, and we made the quick walk over to it. We eschewed getting a live guide and going with an Audio one instead. While the Audio Guide was very informative without dragging (none of the stops were over two and a half minutes, with most being less than two), we were one of a very select few to get the guide. Now, audio guides aren’t economical when you come in a large group, but it was still a little unnerving seeing so few people with one. I tried to spin in to say that we were just a lot smarter than the rest, even so far as having to force myself from not congratulating the other audio guide wearers for being a member of the club.
The City Palace itself is more of a museum, built around the two main courtyards that are open to the public. The courtyards themselves hold some beautiful artwork, like a brilliantly ornate doorway leading into the first courtyard, or a little gazebo like structure housing some photos of the old Royal Family and some women doing a poojah. The other part of the City Palace Museum was a series of exhibits featuring the traditional dress and furniture of the Maharaja of Jaipur, and then the weaponry and barracks, and finally a quick tour of the public viewing area, a large, lavish ballroom adorned with a beautiful canopy in the middle. Overall, the tour was quite good, and because of the use of heavy fans in the indoor portions, quite pleasant despite the heat.
The final tourist stop before my Mom entered Shopoholistan was the Deji Govind Temple, which was well rated in our guidebook and tripadvisor, but was something of a disappointment because it was just a temple. My only real observation was that it was far cleaner than the temples I had visited in Southern India, as similarly Jaipur was cleaner than most of the cities in Southern India
After our foray in the City Palace, we went to experience another Jaipur staple, vegetarian food. I was deathly afraid of being stuck with vegetarian food for my birthday dinner, so I put off eating at a true veg place until today. We found the famous (as far as Jaipur is concerned) LMB, short for Laxmi Misthan Bandar, a cool air conditioned oasis deep inside the bustling maw of the Johri Bazaar (one of the main ‘bazaars’ in Jaipur’s old city). Not wanting to have the usual South Indian Veg fare, I decided to have Rogan Josh, a dish I usually have with mutton, but this time it came with baby corn. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it was still very good as a curry. I’ve always wondered how vegetarians live day-to-day without the amazing gift that is meat, but I can at least believe that someone could last three or four days now.
After we finished at LMB, I returned to the hotel to do nothing but have a mug or two amidst the peacocks, while my Mom shopped at the various bazaars for the handicrafts. I had very few things I was shopping for during my time in Rajasthan, so I felt that walking around in 95 degree heat through shops and shops watching other people shop is not really the best use of my time. Then again, drinking during midday and playing Zelda on my N64 emulator in a courtyard in Rajasthan isn’t really either, but at least that’s something I’ll remember for a while.
My Mom returned around 5:30, and took her turn drinking amidst the peacocks, although her drink of choice was tea. We then took a quick rest and around 6:30, we were picked up for a thoroughly Rajasthanian evening. The destination was the Chowki Dani, a ‘Rajasthani Village’ tourist attraction. It was described to us as a theme park created to look like an old Rajasthani village, with the usual attractions like dancers, artisans, shopping, elephants, camels and traditional Rajasthani meals. From the outside, it looked small and a little disappointing. Thankfully, there was an inside.
When we entered, we were immediately accosted by different stands looking to sell tickets to the park with their specific dinner option attached (you buy a ticket that gives you entrance and dinner, but there are a few different dinenrs). In the end, I kind of forced my mom to eschew the traditional Rajasthani Thali dinner for the buffet, as I feared ending up in a situation where I had an all-veg Thali where I liked only a few of the options and was left hungry. At least with the buffet if there were two or three good dishes I could gorge on those. After we booked the tickets, we entered the Chowki Dani grounds.
It really is exactly as it was described, a large faux-village with many different staged attractions. There were a couple of stages that had dancers with backing music, then an area with palm-readers, a stage for a magician and a stage for a puppet-show (which is far more artistic and impressive in its Rajasthan version than what I was expecting). The whole scene is no doubt very touristy and a little cheesy, but for a great environment where you don’t have to worry about being accosted by hawking salesman or not have to worry about cars driven by awful drivers possibly hitting you as they avoid the cows on the street, sometimes touristy is a good thing. The shows were nice and seemingly authentic to the Rajastani style of dance and music. We didn’t go for any of the extremely-tourist-oriented fare, like Henna, or palm reading, but then again nothing was more touristy than the camel and elephant rides, which of course we did. For 20 and 50 rupees respectively, how can you blame us. The rides were short, but they contained the essence of riding one of these big mammals, bumps and jarring movements and the occasional ducking from trees.
After we finished walking around the main area, which included trips inside a temple hidden inside a man-made cave, and a resort area with cute little houses, my mom decided to check out the other main attraction of the Chowki Dadri: the shopping area. Because I had no verandah with beer and peacocks (and Zelda) to retire to, I had to accompany her around, and what do you know but I got into the shopping mood. The handicrafts in Rajasthan are just that good. I had a singular focus during my shopping, though, which was to get some nice crafted coasters. Obviously the fabrics are wasted on me, and I’m not an age where I want crystal/marble/silver statues and figures. No, I just wanted coasters, and they had some nice black marble carved coasters for a reasonable price. I did some quick, semi-effective bargaining and scored my first purchase of my time in Rajasthan!
After shopping we finally reached our dinner destination, which was a buffet in a restaurant on a resort that was tangentially connected to the Chowki Dani. It was a bit worrisome when the walk to the buffet ended up being quite convoluted, and even more worrisome when we realized that there were few other people in this area. I remembered back to when we entered the Chowki Dani, and the stand selling the buffet tickets were empty, while there was a crowd in front of the Thali tickets. Luckily, the restaurant was full enough, and even better was the fact that they allowed one a-la-carte non-veg item as well as alcohol, two things that definitely wouldn’t have been there in the main area. There is nothing better than going to a place expecting an all-veg buffet and ending up with meat and alcohol. These are the real hidden gems of the Chowki Dani, hidden behind all the stalls selling real gems.
