Rajasthan, India - Jaipur to Ajmer

Paul:

Well, we finally made it to the north of India. Many people have said to us that you don't see the 'real India' until you head north. We flew to Jaipur on a long flight from Kerala. The plane stopped in Bangalore and Hyderbad on the way. A bit like being on a bus really...weird. We arrived at midnight in the end. The guest house picked us up at the airport so straight to bed. Ahhh.

We had good intentions for the next day. We were going to do a walk around the old city and see the sights. The old Palace, the Observatory and a few other things. Unfortunateyly, the centre of Jaipur consists of literally thousands of little shops and stalls selling clothes, jewellery, statues, bed covers etc etc. Hmmm. Guess what? We spent the entire day shopping shopping shopping. It was alright, (Jessica was in heaven once she got into her rhythm). Every stall will entice you with a cheap price. (only 40 rupees sir... Once you get into the shop, the guy will get out hundreds of sarees, cusion covers, bedspreads or whatever. Funnily enough, there never seems to be any at the price the guy first said outside. It was quite exhausting but we finally made it back to our guest house without spending too much. No really, we did!

Next day we headed into town again and actually managed to see the sights. The city palace was quite interesting. We weren't going to get a guide for it but were persuaded to by a guide inside. He spoke excellent English so off we went. Unfortunately, another guide saw this and came over to 'claim' us as his as it was his turn next. This guys English was a little harder to understand unfortunately. After 5 minutes of asking him to repeat everything he said, we parted company with him a little frustrated and continued on our own. The city palace is still used by the Maharasha of Jaipur who was at home but we wern't allowed into his part of the building. Accross the road from the palace is the observatory. This was interesting. It consists of different instruments for measuring the time and position of the sun for astrological purposes. There is a 27 metre tall sundial which is accurate to 2 seconds! Amazing stuff as it was all built about 250 years ago. Clever clogs here forgot to put the card with the hotel address in his wallet before we headed out so we couldn't get a rickshaw back and had to walk. D'oh!

We headed out of Jaipur by bus to a town called Ajmer. This is a smallish town, again with lots of shops. We stayed in a basic hotel in the centre. The town is interesting. Lots of cows walking around (mind where you're treading!). We saw a Jainan Temple which was fairly amazing. In the centre was a huge construction which represents 13 continents and oceans with this enormous palace made in wood and covered in gold leaf. It has thousands of figures of people, elephants, horses and cows all around and is incredibly detailed. We wandered around the town for the rest of the day and only got a little lost in the maze of bazaars. We felt a little like rock stars with people waving to us and wanting to take our pictures. I guess they don't get too many tourists in Ajmer.

Next stop is Puskar