We’re quite happily back in Thailand now, enjoying the last week of our trip at the beach before heading home. We didn’t, however, keep you updated on our whirlwind tour of India, with all of its ups and downs. So with that, I’ll pick up where we left off and finish off our tour of Rajasthan with visits to Jaipur, Jodhpur and Jaisalmer.
Jaipur, dubbed the Pink City, was not as pink as you would think. The shops along the bazaar were painted in more of a peach color, which was at least uniform if not particularly “pink,” but everything else was painted however the tenants wanted. Suffice it to say that was a variety of colors.
Nevertheless, the city was teeming with fantastic Indian architecture. Without even counting the interesting historic houses and commercial buildings dotting the city, the city palace, the Jantar Mandar and the Hawa Mahal were fascinating to explore. I thoroughly enjoyed the Jantar Mandar, an astrological observatory with a sundial accurate to two seconds, and all sorts of fantastic angles to photograph.
From there we headed on to mainly two forts: Jaisalmer Fort and Jodhpur Fort. Both were fascinating in different ways. Jaisalmer Fort is still lived in and in many ways reminded us of Zanzibar, will tiny alleys leading to fascinating slices of life within the fort. It was great to wander around and get lost. We met a few locals that were given to conversation and found ourselves on a beautiful rooftop for sunset. The lit up for after the sun went down was particularly beautiful.
Jodhpur Fort was physically, a more imposing and more impressive fort. The architectural majesty and beauty of the fort was unrivaled in the India we saw.
For all of our current lamentations about India, Rajasthan was an area we thoroughly enjoyed. It is rightfully the most well traveled part of India, it has the culture and history and tradition people come to India looking for.
The architecture is stunning. Can’t wait to see more of your photos in a few weeks.
I would much prefer this place to the latter post.