Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan and has over 3 million people packed into a congested city, it is clear that the road system is under strain as the traffic here is a little chaotic. Roads accessing the city centre (Old city) are designed in a grid system, like America but many of the roads themselves are full of pot holes and the drivers creative in their use of them…
Jaipur is known as the pink city - now before you get an image of flamingo pink with beautiful buildings built in the times of the Maharajahs, bare in mind that the city has grown around the old town… Today the walled city is more brown than pink and although it does have some amazing sites they are surrounded by the urban paraphernalia you would expect in all Indian cities.
Places of interest have included:
Te Amber fort, which is where the throne of the Maharajah used to be and is an impressive building full of artefacts for the budding history enthusiast. From the top there are amazing views of the surroundings and city.
Janter Mantor which is an Astronomy centre where the Maharajah could get an accurate time for a child’ birth, it was surprisingly accurate and had a different observation platform for each star sign J As it was Sept 23rd this meant we had arrived on the equinox and therefore on the one day that there was no shadow cast on either side of the dial!!! As the sun needed to be in the north or the south to cast a shadow and as it was directly in line with the observatory there was not shadow…What are the odds of turning up on just the right day for this?
Nahargarh fort - As Amber fort really
Albert Hall and museum - better on the outside I feel than on the inside.
Monkey Temple - A place set between huge rock faces with steps carved directly from them up to bathing pools for the men and women (separate of course). Here to you find a large number of monkeys who show enthusiasm for the tourists who have purchased nuts for them sat the gate - if not you are ignored and the monkeys lay in docile reverie watching the comings and goings of worshippers and tourists alike. As if to say “Why are you walking about in the mid-day sun when you could be lying in the shade like us….. Unless you have peanuts? Well do you?….
World record sized wheeled cannon with a range of 35km!! Needing 100lb of gunpowder to charge it… Only been fired once to test it… Probably shocked some poor sole 35km away!!
Jaipur is the major centre of manufacturing in Rajasthan - Housing a large and growing number of cottage industries. Today I witnessed first hand some of the work done by visiting outlying ‘villages’ which produce the goods for export and markets. My driver assured me it was to look not to buy… Well almost…
The first factory was a paper mill which employed a large number of people. I was welcomed by security and then given a free in depth tour of the factory meeting the workers at each stage of the process. It was fascinating to see how the journals and items made for the UK/USA market are made by hand. The process involves taking cotton/paper and putting it through a process of washes and treatments until it becomes a warm pulp. This pulp is then siphoned off into other tanks to be dyed, sieved and dried in layers before moving on to be checked - if the quality is poor it is recycled into the tanks again. Then the sheets of paper are organised into pages for journals, books, writing pads and cards. Once again nothing is wasted as all cut offs are reprocessed. Then finally their as a section for either gluing or ring stamping the finished products and adding bar codes for market and pricing. The whole process is completed by hand and the workers enjoyed having a visitor to say Namaste J On finishing the tour there was a factory shop and I could not resist buying some paper from the actual source factory - Amazing people and lovely products.
The second factory was a textile producer - They completed work in Cotton and Silk using nothing but hot/cold water tanks (Stone pits where workers stood inside and manually processed the cloth), dying pits for colour and drying stands (Must have been 20ft high) for hanging to finished product to dry in the sun. Even though there were hundreds of racks some of the processed cloth had to be laid out on the ground as there was not enough space!! We drove over some of the cloth just to get down the road!! Finally the products are taken from the site by Camel cart as the roads are very poor and delivered to transport companies to send to markets in Europe and USA. All work once again by hand including the addition of printed colours via vegetable dye - All locally sourced.
The general picture is that although the factories use technology it is old and relies on labour intensive methods of production thus keeping the skills of the artisans going through the generations.
Other notable sites here have been elephants walking around the city making themselves available for photo shoots and snake charmers with their Cobras in baskets waiting to leap into musical performances as soon as the tourists have finished their visits to famous landmarks.
So to sum up Jaipur I would have to say if you like shopping for handicraft items it is the place to come for value as many of the products in the markets are produced here. But it is not the romantic pink city I was expecting. Rather a series of interesting historical and religious monuments surrounded by the rapidly growing monuments of modernity, shops, factory districts and homes interwoven with potholed roads filled with fume belching vehicles of every type, which turns your snot black!! As well as the odd sustainable but traffic jam inducing, camel, horse and elephant…
As a tourist, two days is more than enough time here
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