Jaipur Day 2

At the Royal Palace

Jantar Mantar: the observatory

No it's not a skatepark! These are instruments to observe the position of the planets, sun and read horoscopes.

The streets of Jaipur

Hawa Mahal: Jaipur's landmark

In front of Hawa Mahal

Jaipur traffic from the back of our auto-rickshaw...camels welcome.

Me and Sue at Jantar Manter

The City Palace

Today we had a lazy morning and read by the pool until 1pm when we decided that we would at some point have to leave the oasis that is our hotel and enter India.

We took a taxi into the old walled pink city to see the sites. We went to the City Palace first then to Hawa Mahal (Jaiper's main landmark..a large pick honeycombed sandstone building that was built in the 1700's by the maharaja so the royal ladies could watch the goings on in the city below) and Jantar Manter, the observatory: a courtyard of what looks like bizarre sculptures but they are all instruments to calculated the position of the planets , the time of day and the movement of the horoscopes.

We wandered around a bit afterward appreciating the sheer volume of homeless livestock mulling around and found an auto-rickshaw to take us home...at one point we were sharing the road with cars, rickshaws, cows, goats, stray dogs, monkeys, motorcycles, bikes, horse and carts, a man riding horseback, a camel pulling a huge cart, and hundreds of pedestrians trying to cross through the mess...then on top of that imagine everyone who owned a horn honking it...constantly..... Chaos this country!

Tomorrow afternoon at 5:15pm we take a 2 hour train to the Ranthambhore National Park...well, actually to a city called Sawai Madhopur about 10km outside of the park where we will get picked up and taken to our tents inside the park! We are staying for 2 days in the park and taking 2 Safaris, one morning and one evening, in hopes of seeing wild Bengal tigers...this is the only park in Rajasthan which still has tigers and the best place to spot one: so finger's crossed! There may or may not be reliable Internet access so don't panic if we are not heard from for 3 days! I am off again to feast on delicious Indian food..I can smell my dinner from here! YUM!