Day 4- Jaipur—The PINK CITY

Today was H-O-T!! Pretty much b.c., as I didn’t realize til the end of the day, we are now in a desert. Woohoo. (and yes, all of you who know me- I look like a lobster now!)

We got a new guide- a woman!! Which is a shocker…

And as goes in ALL trips where you have a guide, the first one is always the best & the 2^nd sucks.. L She was nice, but rushed us everywhere and on the whole was fairly annoying. (but at least we had a guide J )

Jaipur is a city in the Rajasthan province of India. (Like a state) This state is home to the Rajputs, or warrior clans who claimed to originate from the sun, moon, and fire. They controlled this part of India for over 1000 years and even maintained a lot of their power when the Mughals came to power all over India. So, back in the Mughals day, there was a king that ruled over the city and the Emperor was in charge of all of India. Both let the other rule their respective areas and didn’t bother each other, but essentially the king was underneath the Emperor. (power-wise)

Amber (pronounced “Ameer”) near Jaipur, was the ancient capital of the whole Rajasthan area. It was where the warrior clans were ruled from via king.  Once the Mughals were in power, the king still stayed in power in the region- just had to listen to the Emperor as well. There was a palace part of the fort for the king or “Rajput” and there was a military section of the fort. All of this was on top of a hill and surrounded by a city wall to protect Amber.

I found it interesting that this city wall remarkably resembled the Great Wall, however, no one hears about the wall at Amber.

Amber fort was REALLY impressive, and yet, not a lotta people hear about it.

There was the option to take an elephant ride to the top of the hill (we opted out due to the long queue).

As in most of the Hindu-Muslim palaces, there’s a public audience area where the king would see people from the city, the market would be there, basically the central meeting place.

One difference here is that the next level- Where the king receives the “Private Audience” aka important ppl that he does business with- is up one level from the Public audience courtyard. (we’ve see mostly flat palaces/forts)

After the private audience area, one more level up is the King’s buildings for worship, layin’ around n chillin, and enjoying the very symmetrical garden. (as usual)

In this next section up was a very unique “Hall of Mirrors” like the one in Versailles. However, this one was made up of a buncha tiny little mirrors instead of huge fancy ones. The reason for the mirrors is so at night, you put a candle in that room and the mirrors will make it light up the whole place. (pretty smart n cool idea)

There was also Turkish baths aka Hammam. Basically this is where the sauna, Jacuzzi, and steam rooms were.

(The toilets...)

(The Jacuzzi...)

Also, since this was the protected private part of the palace- there were windows for the Muslim woman (who were sequestered & couldn’t go into public) to look out onto the public and see what was going on.

On the 4^th level were the private living areas of the King & his Queens. (The Zenana) The first one had 12 wives and this was the first time I’ve seen equal but separate living quarters for each and every wife!! (Go him! How thoughtful!) Since there were 12 wives, and they were still super-uber symmetrical about stuff—there were 3 apartments on each side of a square courtyard.

In the center is where the wives could meet to gossip and fight about their jealousies.

Also, above their apartments was a secret pathway for the king. It went all around the courtyard with stairs down into each apartment. This was for 2 reasons:

1)   So no enemies knew where exactly he was at any one time in order to kill him.

2)   So none of his wives knew which wife he was with and when… (smart thinking)

Now, this Amber Fort area stayed the center of this city & the capital of the Rajasthan area until Jai Singh II moved the capital to Jaipur.  When he moved it to Jaipur, he created a gridded city (according to an ancient Hindu architectural book) with pink walls (which resemble hospitality).

There was “Hawa Mahal” where the ladies of the royal court would sit behind a buncha windows and look out onto the city b.c. they were secluded and couldn’t go out themselves.

There was also a city palace in the center where the current king still lives.

There is “Jantar Mantar” which is an observatory built by Jai Singh b.c. of his extreme interest and love in astronomy.

There were instruments for telling the time of day.

(Below is the largest sundial in the world according to Guinness Book of World Records... it can tell you the correct time within 2 seconds!!) 

There were instruments for telling where the sun was in relation to Jaipur & what day it was:

There were instruments for telling which sun sign (astrological sign) was current:

The altitude of the sun:

(It was really impressive… REAL hard work if you ask me… guys were BRILLIANT!!)