After seeing the wonderful palaces the guide told us we were in for a treat to see how textiles and carpets were made... You guessed it, forced shopping time! The man at the shop took us around the outside first, showing how carpets were knotted (similar to the silk Kashmiri carpets we saw in Delhi), then the undersides scorched to make them non slip, then cleaned and finally trimmed. The trimming was interesting, as they actually trimmed around the main design elements, making them stand out. After this, we were shown the textile block painting technique, famous in this area. They cut out stamps from teak wood, one for the outline, and then different parts for each of the colors, which were then successively stamped in the same place, to fill in the design... I was asked to give it a try, and was assured that if I wanted a job in India, I would be welcome at the factory ;)
Inside, they showed us a few carpets, but could see we weren't that interested, and were actually very polite. We also had a quick look at the textiles, and bargained on some cushions before heading out of there.
Next we drove to the Jantar Mantar, one of 5 astrological observatories across India. The one in Jaipur is the largest and best preserved. AJ showed us a few of the instruments - a large sundial on which we worked out the time, and another, completely different sundial, showing the same time. We also saw a clever instrument to determine the star sign at the time - Sagitarius I believe :) next we saw our own sign, Cancer, and moved to the largest sundial in the world, very impressive, and nicely painted and decorated with niches.
We walked across a busy street to reach the City Palace, home of the current royalty. It seems that most of the Rajasthani cities still have royal families... The palace is a yellow colour, also elaborately decorated, and quite beautiful in its own way. The cost was Rs300 each, which in retrospect was not as worth it as the money we spent on the Amber fort and Jantar Mantar... We started our tour in a textile museum, showing gorgeous garments from a bygone era - royal Maharajah outfits and beautiful ladies saris. One Maharajah jacket and pants were enormous, and the guide told us he was a very fat guy, LOL.
We then moved into the artists gallery, where local artists showed their finely detailed work, beautiful colours overlaid with gold. The artist we sat with drew us a quick free hand souvenir of an elephant with our names on it, quite remarkable really, and didn't push too hard to sell his art.
We had a look around, and then AJ took us through a decorated marble gate where we posed with some nicely dressed guards. The next courtyard area (Diwan-I-Khas) had the usual Mughal crenelated colonnades, one of my favourite aspects of their architecture - I found a pic on the net to give an idea:
The area had two enormous silver urns, listed as the largest in the Guinness book of world records. They carried sacred 4091L of Ganges water per jar (!) when one of the Maharajahs visited London.
The last part of the tour took us into the peacock court (Pritam Chowk), with four doorways representing each of the seasons, each one beautifully decorated in a peacock type style... AJ took some nice pics of us in the doorways. Finally we walked through a beautiful cafe, whee we saw photos of Princess Di and Prince Charles on the walls. We were pretty hungry by this time, and AJ selected a restaurant for us, the Royal Cuisine. We ordered mutton korma and a Rajasthani special dhal (quite watery) with rice and roti.
After lunch we asked AJ what was next, and he said he would take us to a place that would show us the gemstones the area was famous for, and how they were cut. Wow, this was a new record in the number of forced shopping excursions on one tour... I almost couldnt face it... The place we went to was actually just a jewelery shop, and they showed us some rings, but nothing particularly appealed to me, and they could see we werent that interested, so we just chatted a bit to the owner, who told us he had been in London, and now was back to practice alternative healing and assist an orphanage. He told me my chakras were blocked up, and that I should forgive my mother for her pregnancy... Ok I don't know about that, all I know is my nose was sure blocked ;)
AJ said we had seen all there was to see, and to be honest, we were feeling pretty tired, so we decided to call it a day. Back at the hotel, we ate at the rooftop restaurant, not expecting much. We waited forever for our food, as we had for breakfast, but when it came it was actually worth it. I think they had just ordered takeaways, but the Malai Kofta (vegetarian balls in creamy sauce) and Gatta Masala (Rajasthani dumplings in a spicy tomatoey sauce) were really delicious. The vegetarian dishes have really never failed to impress us, while the meat has been average at best. I think I could easily become a vegetarian in this country!
Time for an early night to try and sleep off this cold. Tomorrow we head to Jodhpur, on the edge of the Thar desert. We were supposed to go by train, but Mr Narender suggested he could drive us instead, as there would be no doubt the train would be horribly delayed again. (It was actually exactly the same train that had taken us from Varanasi to Agra). I can't begin to explain the relief I felt at not having to waste a day on a train again!
- Nix
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Location:Jaipur, India
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