Jaipur - The Pink City | INDIA


What a lovely town! It is the capital of Rajasthan state and I believe you won't regret spending at least 4 days exploring, at least it will be enough time to see the 'main attractions' I guess, since this city has a lot to offer. 

Jaipur is also known as Pink City because the buildings are actually painted in pink - 'pink' which is kinda orange I would say. And the reason why Maharaja Ram Singh of Jaipur (prince) decided to paint the whole city in pink, apparently is because the colour pink means hospitality and he wanted to welcome his special guest in 1876, the Prince of Wales and Queen Victoria which were visiting India on a tour. However, others say it was with the intention of reflecting the Mughal cities’ typical red sandstone architecture. 
Who knows what is the actual truth, but what matters is that it is pinkish and cute haha. 
  
Looks more like an orange city than a pink city


We stayed only 2 days in Jaipur (not enough unfortunately), you can see our short video here also :)
We stayed at the hotel Hotel Vaishnavi which at that time had a cost of about $15 per night and it wasn't bad at all. Cool view from the rooftop terrace, clean and comfy room. 

Way down from Amer Fort


We visited the Amer Fort (Amber Fort) - A beautiful 16th century hilltop fort and palace with Hindu and Muslim elements. There is a pavilion called Sheesh Mahal inside the Fort which was built for use by the imperial family, famous for intricate mirror work. 
Elephant rides are offered to go up to the Fort. We did not take the elephants as we feel sorry for them. Don't be lazy and respect the elephants, it is only a short walk. 

Palace Garden and a faded view of Jaigarh Fort at the top


From Amer Fort you can see the Great Wall of India! Yes! India has a great wall too and it seems to be the 2nd longest in the world with over 35km and the walls are 6 meters high and 3 meters wide. Now, we didn't get to go there and walk on the actual wall, I didn't even ask if it was possible since we didn't have enough time, so please, do yourself a favor and don't stay less than 4 days in this city. There's so much to be seen and because we never plan anything in advance nor research anything beforehand, this is what happened, missed out on some pretty cool stuff. 

The great wall on the left and top of the mountain


Hawa Mahal - It is made of pink/red sandstone and known as 'Palace of the Winds' and it is a quite famous landmark in Jaipur. The Palace was built in the form of a high wall to screen royal ladies as they watched street festivities without being seen from the street, which I think it's quite funny and I wonder if this is true also. 

Hawa Mahal


Jantar Mantar - Very interesting 18th century park and UNESCO heritage site with fixed instruments for making astronomical observations. Self-guided tour around the site is also available. 

Jantar Mantar


Jal Mahal - Is a palace located in the middle of the Man Sagar Lake. It is a five levels building, when the lake is full of water its four bottom levels are dipped under water, and only the top floor is visible. I found it fascinating! 

Jal Mahal


Cheese balls!!
We went to a rooftop restaurant/bar called Peacock which had a really easy atmosphere, we saw fireworks and had the most amazing cheese balls ever! I had to mention the cheese balls because in Brazil we have cheese balls and they are delicious, so the menu said cheese balls and I said YES YES YES, PLEASE!! haha I had to give it a go. 


We would definitely have spent more time in Jaipur, because we didn't get to see everything we wanted, however we had already booked a couple of train tickets because of the peak season (December) as they were already 'tourist emergency tickets' as they call. So basically we had to choose stay a week in Jaipur and skip Jaisalmer or stay less time in Jaipur to be able to explore a bit of Jaisalmer. 
And I am glad we didn't choose to skip Jaisalmer, it was my favorite destination in Rajasthan!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Kolkata ( Calcutta ) | INDIA

Image
We flew to Kolkata planning on staying 3 nights, no accommodation booked in advance. Basically, we arrived at the airport (2am) and spoke to a couple of backpackers on the same flight as us to see where they were staying - Just to have a rough idea. And so we also found out that Sudder Street was apparently a well known area. Well and that's where we ended up. *Not having a hotel booked can come in handy when you land at 2am. It does sound weird, but we found out that one of the guys in the same flight as us had a booking and his hotel was closed when he arrived, which means he could not get in, had to find another hotel to spend the night and lost his money for that night. So we jumped on a cab and asked him to drop us off in the middle of this Sudder Street which was the main touristic part of the city (apparently). At 2am everything is closed, most of the accommodations as well, so we thought this would be our best shot. But it was fine, it just felt ...
Read more

CHINA | Why Qingdao?

Image
I like to say that we didn’t choose to go to Qingdao, but Qingdao chose us to go there! Haha One ordinary day in February last year, Viv and I were chatting at a bar and having a couple of beers. That’s when he got his phone to check something we were discussing and spotted this amazing deal to fly from Melbourne, Austrália to Qingdao, China. The flight was ridiculously cheap that we couldn’t help ourselves and ended up buying it. It was about $200 AUD return each! WTF!!!!! Seriously, we had once missed out on an amazing deal to Japan $300 AUD return. So we didn’t think twice, we purchased the tix in less than 15 min of finding the deal haha… I guess the beer also helped a bit. City View Here is the thing, at first we didn’t even know where Qingdao was located! We knew nothing about it, never heard of it or anything. We literally bought the tickets and then we went to do a quick google search to check where it was and some info about it. But basically we...
Read more

Old and New Delhi | INDIA

Image
We arrived in Delhi by train, as usual, and I thought it would be a place we would like to stay longer than we actually did, not sure why, but yep I was wrong. We could not wait to leave this city after the first day, but due to sold out train tickets we had to stay 3 full days there.  Still we found some beauty in it of course and there's plenty to do, don't get me wrong, however it can get a bit stressful, as there are scammers everywhere.  We stayed at a nicer hotel this time. When I say 'nicer', it is compared to where we stayed before, or perhaps just a bit more expensive which does not mean necessarily nicer. We paid $35 per night at that time and yes, they had hot shower and comfy/clean bed! Happy days. We explored a bit of the area which we were in, which apparently was the tourist area (Main Bazar Rd) and we didn't find it super exciting (perhaps because it was the tourist area? HA). We still enjoyed having brekky at a rooftop restaurant there an...
Read more