Jaipur I
My first sidequest, within like, two weeks of touching down in India was Jaipur aka the ✨ Pink City ✨. It's the capital of the northern state of Rajasthan, and was about a two hour direct flight from Bombay. It's got hella palaces, forts, and other historic structures that make it a pretty popular tourist destination on its own, and even more so if you combine other Rajasthani cities like Jodhpur & Udaipur. It's also considered 1/3 of the Golden Triangle of sightseeing in the north, along with Delhi & Agra. I decided to keep it simple and plan a four day trip just to Jaipur which ended up being the perfect amount of time to see everything we wanted. This post is gonna be XXL so prepare yourself lol.
Obvs I picked an AM flight to maximize Day One. Maa is even more travel anxious than me so we got to the airport mad early and went to the lounge for some aloo parathas and chai for breakfast (Indian lounges > American lounges). The Adani lounge at BOM is freaking gigantic! So seating wasn't an issue and the buffet had literally 30+ items to choose from including a dude who makes dosas to order. Then we got a full ass lunch on our 11am flight bc airlines in India still do that and it was actually delicious. Chicken tikka & dal makhani at 30,000 feet is the way to go. Fuck Southwest & their pretzels lol.
The hotel I (heavily researched and) picked was GORGEOUS. The building itself is only about a decade old but it's designed to look specifically like an old haveli. I was in LOVE. I’m gonna do a separate post/photo dump for the hotel. The concierge arranged for our tour & transportation bc apparently rideshares and rickshaws are a hot mess in this city. Which worked for us bc that's what I was hoping to have someone with us all day anyway. Our driver & guide that we had for the next few days was a taciturn guy named Abdul. He was full of pro-tips and every time he dropped us off somewhere, he would let us know if it was worth getting an official/paid tour or if the spot was just fine to wander around on our own. He'd also drop fun facts along the way, pointing out things as we drove from place to place and add his two cents as a born & bred local.
Also, the weather was fucking perfect. My absolute, ideal type of weather where I can (and did) walk 15-20K steps a day and barely break a sweat. Even though Feb is still technically winter, Bombay was in the 90s daily and I was melting coming from a NoVa winter. As we're making our way downtown, it's in the 70s and I'm gaping at the locals who are wearing jackets! and scarves and layers and knitted beanies. WHAT! We must have looked ridiculous with our short sleeves and bare legs but it was just so much better than Bombay and we were loving it.
We started off our sightseeing at City Palace. It's smack dab in the middle of the city and is like a mini city inside the walled city. Imagine the size of Mosaic district but in 1700s palatial vibes. It's got a few main "doors" or "gates" to get in which are like, 30 feet tall and beautifully carved/decorated. Each one has got its own style representing the four seasons and different gods but us commoners are only allowed through two. I feel very whitewashed comparing everything to GoT or other western media but this totally could've been a filming location for like, Dorne. Beautiful architecture, airy courtyards lined with various ornate buildings, and more gorgeous doors, with all us tourists milling about could easily have been members of the court occupying the public areas back in the day.
The Palace complex is ginormous. There's the main residence of the royals that isn't open to the public bc they still live there and there’s lil flag that let’s you know if they’re in residence. There are buildings for working offices, arms & art museums showcasing the history of the royal family & dynasty and the area's history, the large courtyard where us commoners could gather, a restaurant, and the "receiving hall" that is SO huge, with the largest Persian rugs I have ever seen in my life. The throne room aka the Sabha Niwas had two giant thrones in the middle (duh) but I don't have pics bc photography was off limits in here and a lot of the interior parts of the Palace complex. The guard in this room was a super friendly old man who is clearly so passionate about his job that he decided to walk around this room with us, pointing out the portraits of the entire line of this royal family, dropping stats about various rulers like their polo skills and military service, artifacts in the room, how guests were received, the carved balcony room where women looked upon the proceedings of this hall without being seeing themselves etc. It was really sweet and so much better than us just reading the signage.
The textile museum is housed in a structure in the middle of the courtyard carved out of marble & stone aka the Mubarak Mahal. Again, no pics allowed inside but we saw clothes through the eras. Amazing, ornate outfits to their daily wear silken garments etc. Omg they had this one prince who was SO FAT that he ate 5kg of jalebi (a deep fried dessert) and 5L of milk EVERY MORNING for breakfast. One of his fits is in the on-site textiles museum and this dude was seriously fat. Tall too, but so damn wide. I think he was like 400 lbs per the placard. The arms museums had all the cool swords, shields, helmets from generations of the family. Everything in this place had intricate carved or embroidered details from the swords to the robes to the freaking handkerchiefs used by the royals. Tbh I looked at both the textile & arms museums as art museums as well. The styles of the items as well as the motifs and cultural influences on the pieces were something to be appreciated on its own.
There's also a giant open hall called the Diwan-e-Khas that still hosts regular folk for major holidays, and has these two silver vessels/urns that are 750 lbs each and can hold 4,000 liters of water. They're Guinness' largest STERLING SILVER vessels made by melting 14K silver coins. One king took water from the Ganges when he visited England which let's be real, was smart af bc London sanitation was disgusting for a long time. You can see them above in the pic on the right, framed by the arches, and a close up of one below.
Next we went to Jantar Mantar which is basically an open air astronomy park opposite City Palace. There are a few in the country all commissioned by one king who was the founder of Jaipur. This stuff is so simple yet hightech that my 2023 mind couldn't even compute what's going on. I just read all the placards and tried to absorb but I swear I needed a dictionary or an astronomy minor just to understand the placards that were around. Ofc this is also a UNESCO world heritage site bc it's amazing like everything else in this city & country tbh.
There are like 20 devices here from the largest sundial in the world, to ones that do everything from tell time with an accuracy of +/-20 seconds based on angles & shadows, or tell time in diff time zones, ones that measure sunrise & sunset, longitude and latitude of celestial bodies, and on and on. Which makes sense bc "Jantar Mantar" literally translates to "calculating instrument" in Sanskrit.
Our next stop was Hawa Mahal aka the "Wind Palace". The place was only open for like 30 more mins that evening so we decide to tour the interior on a diff day, and instead, went to this cafe that I scoped on tiktok. The aptly named Wind View Cafe is in a building across from the Hawa Mahal so we chilled with a cup of chai and some pakoras, and watched the palace light up for the night. 10/10 highly recommend. There are a few cafes like this across from the palace and they all technically have cover charges but that's offset by anything you order. It was like ₹200 for the both of us? I actually didn't realize that was the deal until we only ordered like ₹120 worth of stuff and the waiter insisted we get something else bc "we already paid for it anyway".
Actually idk if I can describe where we were as a building bc it's like, a continuous structure running along all the avenues of the city. Peep the second pic I stole from the internet (s/o to the Jaipur Tourism site). All uniformly soft pink on the ground level, with matching architecture and signage contained within the main, planned-city areas, the gates marking the borders of "downtown", the buildings and awnings running up and down the main boulevards of the city for literal miles.
Down on the street level, shops line the streets so we pause for a little retail therapy. My goal on this trip was to buy local handicrafts from all the places I visit so on my shopping list for Jaipur was their famed quilted jackets, regular quilts for my bed, handprinted clothes, and jutis (specific type of shoe). I'm kicking myself for not taking pics here but I was caught up in jacket heaven, where I bought two-- one long & one short, hand-made and hand-dyed. My mom ending up getting one too even those she lives in FL these days bc it was just too beautiful to pass up.
At this point we call Abdul to come scoop us up and wrap up for the day bc it's around 9pm and we have a long day tomorrow with a LOT of walking.
Royally yours xx
