Jaipur

We arrived in Jaipur rather late, so we just ate in the hotel and had a quiet night. The following day we gave ourselves to one of the tuctuc man to show us around without a premade plan. That turned out to be a fun day! We started in monkey village, from where we had a great view over the city. 

Maartje fed the monkeys, but the third monkey was so clever to steal the whole bag of nuts. Maartje tried to get it back, but unfortunately the monkey didn't want to give it back..... On top there was a small temple, only worth the visit for the view. After that we visited the great Amber fort, the most majestic fort in the surroundings.

 It was built in 1727 when the capital was switched to Jaipur. It was increadibly large and the fun part were the thousands of little corners, stairs and hallways, like a large maze. It took a few hours to explore. You can enter the fort by elephant if you wish, but instead we went to elephant town. 

They paint their elephants, just because they can, it is a tourist atrraction. We didn't go for a ride, but we baked them some chapati's. 

Elephants eat about 4 kilo of chapati per day and a lot of grass and other things. It is actually quite a lot of work to make so many chapati's, even if you kae them 4 time the size of a normal one.... After Elephant town we went up the mountain again to tiger hill, from where we had a beautiful view over the city...we were just a little late for sunset. But still quite enjoyable with a beer and some pakora...  We went for dinner with the rickshaw driver and two if his friends, which was actually quite fun. However we friendly refused their invitation to go clubbing, not to break every single rule the hotel sets....  The driver wanted to take me to his family village and asked Maartje for permission.... fortunately she refused ;) 

The following day we visited the city itself. First we had to climb the Ishwar lat tower, so we had an overview of the pink city. Only the old part was pink though. The guy at the entrance climbed up with us, to show us the different buildings. Then we had to follow him down, because we had to take a picture of ourselves holding the tower between our fingers ;) no discussion possible..... Ricksaw man then took us to some tombs. They asked wether we wanted to have a guide, because with a guide the history would come alive, while without the tombs would just be a pile of stones.... we couldn't refuse if course, and fortunately he did have some funny stories. There were several tombs of different shaws, the oldest being 400 years old. One shaw was about 250 kilo's and had about 900 girlfriends, because every time he had sex with one, she was crashed under his weight and would die.... However, the monkeys at the tombs were the best! We even saw one just a couple of days old :) 

Of course we had to end our tour with a visit to a fabrique factory. This was a project from a dutch girl Janneke, and 300 woman were making patterns to earn a living. We never know how much of these stories is true, even when they show certificates and pictures, but we often like the things they sell, and they are still pretty cheap. As our train was only 6 hours late, it was time to get to the station :) We arrived at the same time as the train, for a 6 hour ride to Jodhpur.