I left Delhi for Alwar on the 30th, first taking a cycle-rickshaw through the chaos of the streets to the Old Delhi Railway Station (rather than fighting the metro crowds with my backpack). I arrived at the station, a red sandstone building built by the British in Moghul style about 1900, about 11, but my train was delayed and didn't leave until 1. The woman on the public address system kept telling me the inconvenience caused was deeply regretted, but I didn't mind it much. I did mind the guy trying to pickpocket me on the way to the train as it was arriving. I caught him in the act and grabbed his arm. I yelled at him, but refrained from hitting him. After I let him go, an older man asked me what had happened and then told me I shouldn't have let him go.
I found my seat on the train, in a 2AC sleeper car. I had tried to get second class but there were no seats available when I booked my ticket. This was an air conditioned car with bunks and I had one of the bottom ones. The windows aren't as good in 2AC as in second class. They are sealed, tinted and scuffed. Still, there was a view and after we were past the trackside slum housing on the outskirts of Delhi I watched the countryside go by, with lots of green agricultural fields but not too many people noticeable. A family of three across from me ate and then slept and I talked quite a bit with a 26-year-old marketing guy on his way to Ahmedabad. There were quite a few trees along the way and we passed rocky hills as we neared Alwar, a city of 250,000, arriving about 4. I took a cycle-rickshaw along relatively uncluttered streets and found a hotel and then walked around a bit before it got dark. I could see the ramparts of the huge fort on the rocky hills a thousand feet above the city and I found a billboard advertising cement with caricatures of Obama (in a purple suit) and Indian Prime Minister Singh. In the evening there was another wedding procession with a turbaned groom on a white horse accompanied by a band, light bearers and men and very colorfully dressed women. The hotel served a delicious vegetarian thali, several courses for about $2.25.
The next morning I walked to the City Palace in the sunshine and spent most of the day in and around it. The sign said it was built in 1793 and it is an impressively big building. There is a museum in three of the large halls, with Moghul miniature paintings, weapons and other things, including a stuffed tiger, panther and sloth bear. The first floor of the palace contains government offices and in the plaza in front were all sorts of tables with typewriters where you could hire someone to type out a document for you. Various small lawyers' offices were all around, too. I had a small lunch of vegetable soup and some sort of pastry for about 20 cents. Behind the palace was a very green lake in a tank (a reservoir), with steps on all sides and with little Moghul style pavilions around it. To the south was the cenotaph of a maharaja who died in 1815, the cenotaph named after a maharani who committed sati on his funeral pyre. It was a beautiful building, red sandstone on the first floor and white marble on the second, but with pigeon poop and feathers on large parts of it. Men were playing cards in the shade. I walked all around the tank and the cenotaph, and about 3:30 walked through the streets of the old city, past several old and high gates, and made my way back to my hotel. I got lots of curious stares. Not many foreign tourists come here, which is one of the reasons I came. It is nice to have people say hello who are genuinely saying hello and not just trying to attract your attention to sell you something. I saw no other foreigners in Alwar.
I took a cycle rickshaw to the train station the next morning and boarded a train bound for Jaipur about 11:30, only ten or fifteen minutes behind schedule. A train heading in the opposite direction, towards Delhi, had people riding on the roof. I was in a second class sleeper carriage and had a good view of the hazy agricultural countryside, with women in the very colorful Rajasthani dress of saris and shawls working in the fields. I also saw a camel-drawn cart or two. The train arrived in Jaipur after about two hours, right on time. Jaipur is a huge city, two and a half million people (so ten times that of Alwar) and I spent an unpleasant hour on its streets before I found a hotel. Then I walked to the old city along the streets full of chaotic traffic, another unpleasant experience. Jaipur was founded in 1727 and I entered the old city through one of the elaborate pink gates. The city was painted pink, a sign of welcome, in 1876 when the Prince of Wales visited and the tradition has continued. Not only are most of the buildings painted pink (at least in the old city), but I also saw pink overpasses on the way into town. The old city was laid out with wide (100 feet or so) main streets, but they are now crammed with noisy, chaotic traffic. I did make my way into some of the quieter narrower streets and came across marble carvers and other craftsmen and several wedding processions. I walked as far as the Hawa Mahal, the "Palace of Winds," built in 1799 with hundreds of latticed windows up its five story height to allow the women of the harem to observe the activity on the wide street below without being seen. I walked back to my hotel from there, with a not very good dinner stop on the way.
I woke up the next morning about 6 and was very sick for most of the morning. I spent the day in bed until about 7 that evening, except for trips to the bathroom. I did finally dig out my thermometer from my backpack about 2. My temperature reached almost 101 degrees, but was normal by 6 pm and I felt okay. I read for about two hours and went back to bed before 9.
I felt fine the next morning. After a breakfast of banana porridge and toast and honey I took a cycle-rickshaw (having finally resolved to walk along Jaipur's streets as little as possible) to the City Palace, started in 1727 but added to since. I spent most of the day there, visiting its beautiful halls and gates and interesting museums. Among its treasures are two silver urns that are the largest silver objects ever made, each over five feet high and about 770 pounds in weight. The maharaja used them to carry Ganges water when he went to England in 1902 for the coronation of Edward VII. Apparently, he used the water to cleanse himself after coming into contact with non-Hindus. There was also a spectacular textile collection, especially the clothes of the maharajas. One maharaja (the one with the silver urns) was six foot six and weighed 550 pounds and his robe was, not surprisingly, quite large. There was the usual impressive collection of curved swords, daggers, and other weaponry. Curiously, one display case had a bunch of knives and one backscratcher. You wouldn't want to confuse those. The palace also had a chart on the salutes (21 guns on down to 9) due to the leaders of the princely states during the British Empire and that was quite interesting. There were something like 550 princely states, though only about 100 merited salutes. It seems almost all of the maharajas and other princes were Hindus. I had lunch in a nice restaurant inside the palace and late in the afternoon made my way to the Hawa Mahal again, this time entering it to look around. The views down to the street through the little windows weren't very good. From there I walked a bit through the bazaars and then took a cycle rickshaw back to the hotel and had a good thali dinner at a nearby restaurant.
The next morning I took a cycle rickshaw to the Jantar Mantar, an open air masonry observatory built by the Maharaja Jai Singh II, who apparently was quite an astronomer himself (and was the maharaja who founded Jaipur in 1727). I had visited another one of his observatories in Delhi (he built five altogether, four of which still exist), but the one in Jaipur is larger. It was very interesting, with pretty good explanations of the instruments. The largest sundial is about 90 feet high and is said to be accurate to 2 seconds. From there I took a cycle rickshaw outside the old city to the Albert Hall Museum, built in the 1880's. It is a beautiful Mughal style building, but covered with pigeons and their residue. The courtyards have nets, but they are littered with pigeon feathers. It was crowded on that Sunday afternoon, but had a fine collection in an interesting building. I had a lunch of cashews and raisins on the museum grounds while watching a man hand watering the lawns with a hose. Afterward I walked to another museum, the Museum of Indology, that a guidebook has recommended, but its contents were poorly presented, although the son of the founder showed me around and was very nice. In the late afternoon I walked back to the old city and through some of the bazaars before taking a cycle rickshaw back to the hotel.
The next morning I took a cycle rickshaw to the Hawa Mahal and from there took an initially very crowded little bus north to Amber, about 7 miles from Jaipur. At Amber is the gigantic Amber Fort and Palace, with the Jaigarh Palace 500 feet above it on a rocky hill. I had waited until after the weekend to visit in the hope of avoiding huge crowds, and they weren't too bad. You can ride a painted elephant up to the main gate, but I walked, only about 10 minutes. The construction of the fort was begun in the 1590's by a maharaja who was one of Akbar's generals and was the residence of the maharajas until the move to Jaipur. It is a fantastic place, with some beautiful halls and many rooms and passages. There are great views, including of walls all along and up and down the neighboring rocky hills. There seem to be miles of fortress walls. The bookstore at the fort had, along with the usual tourist-oriented books, a copy of Mein Kampf. Apparently, Hitler has some admirers here in India among the Hindu right wing. (Maybe it's the swastikas.) A few months ago I read about a planned Bollywood movie about Hitler and Eva Braun (perhaps a romantic comedy?) that was being protested by India's Jewish community and others.
I spent three or four hours there wandering around and having lunch, and then made the climb to Jaigarh Fort along a stone paved road and spent the rest of the afternoon there. Jaigarh had even better views, along with its own palace buildings, a 17th century cannon foundry and a huge cannon claimed to be the world's largest wheeled cannon, with a 26 foot long barrel that shot cannon balls of 110 pounds. (From Amber Fort I had seen an underground passage that is said to lead up to Jaigarh. There were bats sleeping in underground passages nearby.) I wandered around the fort in the late afternoon sun and enjoyed the spectacular views. It's been cool in Rajasthan, with highs in the 70's and lows in the 50's. It is chilly in the mornings and I usually wear my fleece or windbreaker until noon or later. It gets cool about 4 pm, with sunset about 5:30. About 2 in the afternoon, as I was walking up to Jaigarh Fort in the sun, my thermometer registered only 73 degrees. On the other hand, in the summer temperatures are said to reach 118 or 120 degrees. About 5 I walked down to Amber Fort and caught the bus back to Jaipur, with one last cycle rickshaw through the madness of the streets of Jaipur to my hotel. You do have to admire the skill of the rickshaw drivers in finding their way through the jumble of traffic. You have to pay constant attention while dealing with the incessant horn honking and the exhaust fumes. It would drive me crazy. For a passenger it makes an interesting but not particularly pleasant experience, though it is far better than walking.
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