Jaipur, Rajasthan

A little more than three hundred kilometers from Delhi to the southwest, Jaipur is the primary tourist destination in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Rajasthan is much drier than the areas surrounding Delhi, and although I didn't see it, I've heard that you can take camel treks through the desert.

Jaipur sprawls to the south and west of a plateau that would be called a mesa, were it located in the American Southwest. On top of the plateau sits an impressive fortification called Nahargarh, or Tiger Fort, constructed, like most of the attractions, in the 18th century. The modern sections of central Jaipur have grown around the older buildings leaving a interesting mix of old and newer (not new) architecture. In that heterogeneous jumble are the City Palace, Hawa Mahal, a royal residence, and Jantar Mantar, an observatory.

I arrived in Jaipur to the usual bustle around the train station, encircled and besieged by half a dozen rickshaw drivers offering fares at a discount. Always hurried and always pushy, I've found that the best way to deal with them is to just stand still, not following anyone, not moving, for at least a couple minutes. The act of doing nothing seems like a simple way to assert that you're not pliable prey.

After the short wait, I had a driver take me to a hotel I'd selected in a quieter part of town, away from the dusty center. When I took my room I thought it was quite nice, but it turned into the worst of anywhere I've stayed. The mosquito net was completely ineffective and mosquitoes entered the room at will. I even tried sleeping in repellent, but the heat caused me to sweat it all off. I think I was bitten more in two nights than the entire rest of my trip combined.

On Sunday I visited the City Palace, the observatory Jantar Mantar, and the Amber Fort, with Mario, a Mexican that I met at the hotel. I had expected the city palace in Jaipur to somehow resemble the palaces in Old Delhi and Agra, but it is completely different The palace is a collection of square plazas enclosed by a network of a building. The facades are painted in a striking contrast of colors: blue balconies on yellow buildings, bright white trim on reddish brown walls, and multicolored works surrounding doorways.

Jantar Mantar is just across a narrow dusty street from the City Palace and is a collection of structures built to aid astronomers in tracking celestial bodies. A tall tower dominates the courtyard. On each side of the tower, a circular marble strip rises from the base to form a semi-circle with markings for degrees to accurately locate stars and planets. There are several similar smaller, and therefore less accurate, structures, one for each sign of the zodiac plus one or two more. The stairways that lead to the top of some of the structures have no railings and are somewhat perilous.

Amber Fort is a palace and fort extending along a high ridge about eleven kilometers outside of Jaipur. Built at the end of the 16th century, it was the center of Rajput power until Maharaja Jai Singh II moved administration to Jaipur in the 18th century. There are elephant rides to the ridge top, but Mario and I elected to climb the cobbled pathway. The fort walls command an impressive view of the surrounding plains and Jaipur itself. In addition to a Hindu temple, and museums on the region's history, the fort also contains a cannon foundry complete with a mule driven drill for boring precision holes in the solid, cast barrels.

Monday morning, Mario and I visited Hawa Mahal, which is a tall, intricately carved facade hiding a complex of stairways and balconies overlooking a courtyard. The complicated facade is riddled with small windows for observing the busy street below.

I had my train reservation to depart for Mumbai on Monday afternoon, but Mario had not yet gotten his ticket. We spent a significant portion of the day both before and after the Hawa Mahal, walking the train station, from one ticket window to another, directed by some authoritarian decentralized bureaucracy neither one of us understood. My Spanish seemed marginally better than Mario's English and so I acted as translator. As I boarded my train in the afternoon, Mario had some kind of receipt that would allow him to ask the conductor of his train for a seat when it arrived. It turns out that advance reservations are the way to go.