17 & 18 / 01 - Jaipur

We started off Jaipur with a city trip going over the most important / famous palaces and temples... After a quick stop at a tower that overlooks the old city, we ended up at the City Palace Complex. It contains several courtyards, some gardens and other buildings. Inside, you find several museums about clothing, armory and some artwork. Most impressive were 2 giant silver urns that were used to transport water when some Indian king went to visit King Edward in England. They are in the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest silver objects n the world. Next to the palace, you find a open air observatory (astronomy). We skipped this since it didn't look that interesting without a guide and we had to pay yet again to enter.
From here we moved on towards the Hawa Mahal or the 'Palace of Winds'. It's more like a big wall from where royal ladies could overlook the daily activities on the street. We noticed that here too, everywhere the walls are filled with scribblings by people with lack of respect. Too bad we thought once again. Our rickshaw for the day took us by Albert Hall (a large museum) that was closed for one year due to restorations. Onwards we stopped at the 'Doll Museum'. It looked very closed at first sight and we payed it a visit more out of respect for the school for deaf and mute that hosts it.
A little further we arrived at the Birla Mandir or Lakshmi Narayan Temple. This was definitely worth the visit. It's a beautiful white temple with 2 great statues in it. Since we had to leave our stuff at the gate once again, we quickly payed it a visit separately.

Our second day in Jaipur was more off a excursion day. We drove off towards the mountains and went to visit some forts in the neighbourhood. The first stop at 11km from Jaipur was the Amber fort. For the lazy ones, you can go up the steps towards this fort on a elephant. We took the foot-wagon and in about 10 minutes you are on top. It's a maze of stairs and rooms with courtyards with a great view on top. It also houses several temples.
Another rickshaw drive further up in the mountains took us to a small apartment complex. It houses 5 separate apartments and each one is nicely painted all over the place. The restaurant here is also worth a visit.
The next big fort that was awaiting us was Jaigart fort. This complex houses the biggest movable canon in the world, that was ironically only fired once to test it out.
Driving back towards the city, you can catch a glimpse of the water palace lying in the lake.

We stopped in the old part of the city for some time-filling shopping at the end of the day. Same as always... "yes friend, what you want". After a while, we ended up in a small shop in some alley of a guy that was making jewelry. After getting out of there (with a little money less and some jewelry more), we concluded our day in the pizza hut where the pizza hut boys surprised us with a little dance: Happy birthday Elise :-)