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Jaipur anyone?

I'm falling behind on posting by nearly a month and a half now. It is now March 12th and I've got weekends of travel to catch up on. I can't believe how fast the last month has gone.

Before arriving in India, Suzie had sent an invitation to Walter, another collegue, and I to go to Jaipur as her friend was visiting. I was excited to go on an adventure and discover traveling in India.

I drove with a collegue, Ritesh, and his wife, Kathi, which took about 4 hours. The fields along the way were beautiful and filled with mustard.

We stopped on the way to get the 'best breakfast' ever, according to Ritesh, at a roadside place. He said I shouldn't eat anything, so I had a bit of his aloo paratha and a chai. Yummy!

The food here has been so good. I have discovered myself muttering 'uuuuhhhhhmmm' in the middle of eating becuase it is tasty. I do miss having tofu and other delights at 150 though.

Kathi also taught me some more Hindi. How to write the numbers 1-10 in Devanagali script and the following words.
  • place - jaga
  • let me see - dikhao
  • give me - dena
  • write it down- likh lo
  • who - kaun
  • what - kya
  • where - kahan
  • why- kyun
  • how- kaise
  • 10- das
  • 20- bis
  • 30- tis
  • 40- chalis
  • 50- pachas
  • 60- santh
  • 70- sattar
  • 80- assi
  • 90- nabbe
  • 100- soo
  • 1000- hazar
I met up with the others in Jaipur and we headed off to see the sights by autorickshaw. Such a fun experience to stuff the four of us into the one bench. My new favorite passtime became taking pics from the rickshaw. I thought I was being undercover, but I regularly found people seeing me take a picture, or 10.


In Jaipur there were more types of vehicles sharing the same space: buses, trucks, cars, taxis, autorickshaw, bike rickshaw, horse/camel drawn cart, motorbikes, bikes. Each of these have more than the number of people you'd expect to see riding on or in the vehicle. There are also lots of cows chilling out eating, sleeping, staring....


I also had my first experience with asking to be in a picture. We took lots of shots with these two families. Here's the ladies pic.

We were at the Amber Fort, which is a gigantic previous home to the maharaja. It was built by Maharaja Ma Singh starting in 1592 and is constructed of red sandstone and white marble. One thing that stood out besides the number of rooms for his wives and concubines, is the air-cooling system in place. A channel containing water ran through the room and the excess was let out into the gardens.

My favorite spots were the view over the city from Nahagar (below left) and the Hawa Mahal (below right). Nahargah was built in 1734 as another fort, but in 1868 a maharaja decided to use it to house his wives.














We went to Choki Dani one night. I really felt like I was doing something that Indians do, rather than being a complete tourist. Choki Dani is an amusement park. It has a buffet of Rajastani food, elephant and camel rides, palm readers, dance and music perfomances, and some rides. Getting in was a madhouse. Due to the 3 day weekend people had come from all over to go. At one point we thought about giving our tix to a family so they could go in, but they refused because they thought we needed to go.

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