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We then entered the City Palace complex. We hesitated going in, as it was soooo hot, and we were getting "palaced out". But how many times will we be in Jaipur, India :). We went in, and enjoyed a collection of 300 year old fashions worn by Indian princes, etc, along with old tapestries, and my favorite, the armory :). We wrapped up the palace, and headed back to the hotel. One interesting thing, is that the rickshaw drivers and even the vendors selling water are always trying to charge a little bit more, and you have to negotiate everything. Water bottles have listed on the front that the maximum retail price is about 27 cents. The vendors sometimes try to make a few extra cents and sell it for 34 cents. Not like the 7 cents makes a difference, but just annoying when it says the maximum price right on the front! :). Another interesting thing about water bottles, is that written on each bottle is "Crush the bottle after use". There are, of course, people that try to refill the bottle, and put the cap back on (happened to us the night before in fact - luckily we noticed and didn't drink it!). Thus, the bottle manufacturers make the bottle really thin, so it's easy to crush and helps prevent the reuse. Anyways, we headed back to our hotel for the negotiated 50 cents (despite the requests for 3 dollars). As we were packing up and using the internet, I noticed that the hotel had a photo folder of their hotel on their desktop - they were in the market for photos :). We ended up selling 4 photos for a very special Indian price - which worked out for us, as we were running a bit short on cash, and didn't have enough for the cab to the airport from the Delhi train station. :)
Final thoughts on India: Food: I think I must have died an Indian and been reincarnated. This food is heavenly. I made an attempt to eat chicken the first day, but after that, we were veg-only eaters for the rest of the 8 days. Surprisingly and happily, we made it through without getting sick once! There were a lot of paneers (unfermented cheese), palaks (spinach sauce), masalas (spicy curry), aloo (potatoes), kofta (stuffed balls of various items), gobhis (cauliflower), and combinations of all these items carried to our mouth via naan and dosas (thin pieces of bread, sometimes roasted) with rice. Yummy! Beer of Choice: It was hard to get any alcohol here - most tourists end up with Kingfisher as it is the only one you can find.
Economy: Of course, the majority (~60%) Indians focus on agriculture, while agriculture only makes up of 24% of Indian economy. The majority of the income of Rajisthan (the state we toured most) is from tourism, and not surprisingly, services make up 50% of the entire GDP for India. Prices for foreigners are incredible - our meals were about $2 and taxis were only a dollar or two for 3-4 hours! Climate (March/April): It's hot. The unbelievable smog in Delhi and Agra masked a bit of the heat, but choked you anyways. It was very hot in Udaipur and even hotter in Pushkar and Jaipur (at least on the days we were there). Exchange Rate: 1 US dollar = 44 Rupees (New) Safety Rating: We figured we would add a "number" about how safe we felt before going, and after - to give others and idea. We decided 1 would be like being in Baghdad, and 10 would be living at home. - Safety Perception Before: 8 out of 10 Recommendation to friends: 10 out of 10 - Go to India. I probably could have told you it was going to be a 10 out of 10 before going, given my Indian obsessions, but actually going proved this right :). You could spend years touring India, and we highly recommend going for at least a few weeks. The food is incredible (have we said that yet?), and the people are genuinely friendly. Of course it's difficult to digest the poverty, smells, air pollution, horn beeping, etc. But after a few days (or 3 months traveling), this will be normal and you'll just enjoy the culture. Maybe see Delhi and Agra quickly and go see a few of the other gems on the Rajisthan circuit, such as Jodhpur, Jaislamer, and Udaipur. View Delhi and Agra Photo Gallery View Sawai Madhopur Photo Gallery View Udaipur and Pushkar Photo Gallery Day 96 - Jaipur < | Index | Photo Galleries | > Day 98 - Bangkok © 2007 Blue Ocean Studios, LTD. All rights Reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Services | About | Contact Prints | Return Policy | View Cart World Travel Galleries | World Travel Blog | Links |
We rounded out India today with a visit in Jaipur. We slept in to try to recover from the storm of late night trains and bus :). We woke and headed out for lunch - our last in India. One thing we forgot to write about yesterday is that when we arrived at the hotel, sitting at the computer was a guy who we had seen and talked with in the Agra train station, and then later at the guest house we were staying at in Agra. We had talked to him and his wife, about traveling to Sawai Madhopur. They ended up choosing Jaipur and we went to Sawai Madhopur. When we saw him in the lobby, we said hi and asked how Sawai Madhopur was. He said they had never left Jaipur. He came down with fever, vomiting, etc, and went to a doctor. He was on IV and had a parasite in his gut and dysentery. He's not sure where he got it from - but kinda scary. Even more scary is that we had read that some restaurants poison their customers to run an insurance scam with the local doctor. A few people had died in 1998, and supposedly that had quelled this practice (who knows!). Anyways, we have been very thankful to escape any food problems in India (incredible, especially with our expectations. Guess we have chosen wisely?). Kinda weird to end up at the same guest house in Jaipur (that's not in the guidebooks), and even see him in the lobby. 
We wanted to walk around within the Old City (despite the numerous offers by every rickshaw driver to give us a tour on their cycle). We took off on a bicycle rickshaw to the New Gate of the Jaipur city. Its amazing the leg power of these guys (all for only 50 cents)! We arrived, and found the restaurant we were looking for - (Shee) Ganesh restaurant. We walked up to the rooftop, where there were a few people reading a paper by the outside kitchen. The kitchen was an assembly of huge steaming vats, some stoves, and a tandoori oven. We sat down, and started talking. When we started talking, the chef and waiter got up (they were the ones reading), like we had snuck in and were surprised to find us "westerners" there. There was no menu, so the waiter just started listing random dishes, and we selected two. The chef then began to make them right in front of us, and a 2nd helper made our stuffed onion naans. The food was the freshest we've had (taste and the fact it was cooked right in front of us). It was great (great way to end our last official meal in India). The people in India are always asking where we are from (some to judge how much money we have to spend in their shop or rickshaw, some just curious). Our one waiter, who obviously didn't speak that much English, asked, "What country are you from?" We said America (they understand that better then the US or states). He then asked, "What palace are you from?" I asked him to repeat his question, as I didn't understand. He said the same. It was quite funny (I was guessing that he got confused, with the local "City Palace" - so instead of asking which city - he said which palace :). Ha. We did end up paying about $2 above a "normal" lunch, but that was just because we didn't agree upon the prices ahead of time (with no menu, what can you do?). Good learning lesson - just because it looks cheap (and I'm sure is for the locals), you still better agree on the prices before you eat :).
By now, it was about noon - always a bad time to be walking around :). The sun was sweltering, and we were feeling it. Still can't understand how it gets another 30 degrees hotter here (it was about 85)! We walked down a few bazaar streets selling various items, just taking in the sights. We couldn't refuse another Indian sweet shop, so we stopped in for a quick purchase :). We continued on, and after a while, arrived back at the Palace of the Winds (Hawa Mahal). The palace had been built in the 19th century and was used by ladies to peer down on people along the bazaars. The small windows brought in a nice breeze, as the upper stories were above the neighboring buildings, and we enjoyed the air while we people-watched. Maybe that's why it's the Palace of the Winds :). The funny part of this was that a 10 year old boy wanted his picture with Jaimie. And later, a few 20 year olds (3 female and one male) asked if they could take their picture with us - and when we said yes, they all wanted their pictures separate and together! We spent some time letting them have their photos, and a few minutes later another group of people wanted their photos. We ran out of there, as we started to feel a bit used :). (Maybe we should have started charging? :)
From here, we walked over to the Jantar Mantar - an observatory built in the 17th century by Jai Singh. About a dozen large stone instruments are here, which measure the time, equinox, and supposedly predict monsoons. It was interesting to view the collection, but not worth the $1.10 for a camera ticket (a lot of places in India charge additional to bring a camera, sometimes only for a video camera). 
We walked out, and began walking around the corner to the City Palace. When we did, we saw what we had just talked about earlier that morning - a cobra snake charmer. The two snakes almost looked fake. I wasn't sure if I could really believe that two live cobra snakes were in the basket. Then, one of the snakes got out and slithered a little bit out of the straw box! Ok - now I believed these were real! The guy started playing a tune, and the two snakes just sat there dazed. Wow. The guy stopped, and motioned, and then verbally invited me to get next to him. I laughed, and said no thank you. :). We gave him a little tip for the pics.
We caught our train to Delhi. There weren't any seats in the 1st class section, so we sat in coach (at least it was AC'd). We sat with the locals, and they even served a light snack of Pakora, sweets, juice, and some kind of bread sandwich (which we avoided - didn't look too Indian to us :)). This was followed an hour later by a full meal of bread, rice, paneer and dal - good thing we didn't eat before the train! We hung out at the airport and caught our 1am flight to Bangkok!
Memories: Eating at our first restaurant in India - we miss the food, the first sweets we had in Delhi - watch out - they're addictive!, our friendly "taxi" driver/tourist travel trap, everyone staring at us - without breaking their stare no matter if you stare back, seeing the Taj, the insanely cheap food that's so good!, seeing a tiger (the hard way), racing back from our tiger spotting and getting blisters on our hands from holding on so tight!, Jaimie's birthday and getting a fabulous palace room, reminiscing Octopussy (James bond) - as we rode a double sided rickshaw - drove up to the monsoon palace - viewed the Lake Palace - and stayed in the Shiv Niwas Palace, rickshaws struggling to make it up the hills, surviving rickshaw mania and just crazy traffic, the dirtiest "palace" room ever at the Paramount Palace hotel in Pushkar (which we didn't take), saying a prayer by the side of the lake in Pushkar, seeing the Gangaur festival in Jaipur from the tourist balcony, elephants, camels, goats, cows, horses, monkeys, and dogs all over the streets, someone asking what palace we were from, seeing a cobra charmer, locals thinking we were the tourist attraction.
People: Once we got past everyone trying to sell us something, the people were whole heartedly friendly. It made us feel bad to not trust people by instinct, but when your touring 6 cities in 9 days, that's one of the things you lose out on. It was always a good feeling when people's advice and information turned up 100% correct - and everyone wanted to help you on your way (other then those rickshaw and taxi drivers, and vendors :)). 