Sunday 8 July 2007

Fri 6th July - Jaipur Day 2

Forgot to mention an interesting experience that I had yesterday while waiting for my train at Bharatpur. I had a few people that were looking at me (as the only westerner on the platform) and chatting amongst themselves. It was a little unnerving at first as a gang of 5 or 6 guys came over to talk to me. In situations like this I'm aware that I'm travelling solo in a foreign country. However, the group of guys were merely curious to find out where I was from, what I'd been doing in Bharatpur and where I was going. I think they were just looking for an opportunity to practice their English. They were soon joined by another guy with better English who works for the Indian government, and at that point a few more interested natives came over to check out the white guy! :)

The guy who worked for the government was genuinely really friendly, he's from Jaipur and was full of info on places to go etc and made sure I knew which train carriage I needed to get on, although I'd figured this out already having travelling by train already. When you purchase a ticket here you are assigned a seat in a particular carriage, but its not all that difficult to figure out as the carriages all have a letter and number on the outside, so you know which one to get on. After having been made wary of people in Agra and Delhi it was refreshingly different to just have a chat with a few of the locals.

My train carriage was full of a few different groups of westerners. There was a Canadian and American girl that I didn't get chatting to on the train, but have bumped into on three separate occasions over the last few days here in Jaipur, its funny how you keep seeing the same people doing the tour of the various sites! I was sitting beside an Australian from Brisbane and an American from Vegas who were part of a group of westerners doing volunteer work here in India for the last few months. They were nearing the end of their time here and were being taken on a whistle stop tour of a few cities by their Indian hosts. The girls very kindly shared some of their food with me, which included a few Indian nibbles, one of which wasn't a million miles away from being similar to Turkish Delight, although is made from pumpkin of all things.

On my first day in Jaipur I got to see a few of the centrally located sites. First off we stopped off briefly at the Albert Hall which was built in honour of the Prince of Wales visit in 1876. The Albert Hall now houses the Central Museum which contains a collection of artifacts, paintings, carpets and other items of historical significance from around Rajasthan. Unfortunately though, because this was a Friday the museum was closed for whatever reason. In preparation of the Prince of Wales visit in 1876 Jaipur was painted pink, this is why Jaipur is known as "The Pink City". The pink section of the city is the old part of the city, which is partially surrounded by a wall which has a series of gates at intervals. Jaipur outgrew the boundary of this wall and has sprawled outwards.

The main attraction of the Old city is the City Palace where the current Rajasthan Royal Family still live in a part of the palace. Apparently the current Maharaja is a great polo chum of Prince Charles. Jaipur gets its name from Jai Singh II who came to power at the age of 11 after the death of his father, Maharaja Bishan Singh. It's said that at age 15 Jai Singh met with the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb (remember him, he was the one who seized power from Sha Jahan - who built the Taj). When the emperor grasped the young lad's hand the youth retorted that, as the emperor had extended the traditional gesture of protection offered by a bridegroom to his new wife by taking his hand, it was incumbent upon Aurangzeb to protect the young ruler and his kingdom in a similar fashion. This earned Jai Sing the title 'Sawai' which means 'one and a quarter', a title that was proudly borne by all of Jai Singh's descendants. Today there is still a quarter sized flag flying next to the full size version when the Maharaja is in residence.

One and a quarter flags!


Beside the city palace is Jantar Mantar, the name is derived from the Sanskrit 'yanta mantr' which means 'instrument of calculation'. Before building this observatory in 1728, Jai Singh sent scholars abroad to study foreign constructs. It contains a collection of sun dials for charting the suns annual progress through the zodiac as well as other devices to measure the position of the stars, calculate eclipses and even to predict the arrival of the monsoon rains.

No comments: