Jaipur
Jaipur is a lovely – pretty clean, has a great flyover road to skip a bunch of traffic, lovely buildings with uniform signage. The traffic chaos still exists but the architecture and city layout help.
The Amber Fort was the first stop and it’s lovely.
Ajay was a good tour guide – took us to the hot spots. We used the ramps a lot that were built for the queen’s wheeled chair when her dress and jewelry were too heavy for her to walk. He gave us options on what to see or skip and told us if we want to shop or see the local block printing, just tell him. He’s been a guide for 22 years and definitely has the personality for it. We passed on the shopping.
It’s a small world! The guide’s nephew is at CSU. I looked him up in the Student Directory and he’s majoring in Engineering.
The Jantar Mantar Observatory was fascinating and measures time in India Local time which is not used any more. India Standard Time was started by the British when they needed uniform schedule times for the trains. The offset is shown every day at the Observatory. There’s an astrology clock too.
We went on the food and market walk in the afternoon from about 3:30 – 6:30 AND we even crossed the streets about 6 times with the guide. The street crossing rivaled Hanoi! The guide was quite good and we can now find the wedding dress section and the metal pan section in Jaipur. Had some samosas that were great. People bought them by the big bags full! The stand sells several thousand a day.