India Day 6 - Jaipur

Added: December 07, 2008

Thursday 6th November. I am tired as we get up. My throat is still sore. OK I am going to start with Azithromycin. Today we plan to visit Jaipur and shortly before midnight we are going to Jaisalmer by train.

We went down, our host was already there, a bit later Canadian couple came. We have been offered possibility to leave our luggage here, return in the evening and to have dinner here. Then all 6 of us would take rickshaw to train station to catch our train. It would be very hard to refuse such an offer!

We talked about our plans, Canadians wanted to go to Amber Fort too and we realized that having rickshaw for whole day is unnecessary expensive - it is possible to get to Amber Fort for 100 Rs, back to the city centre for 100 or less and it should cost 40 to return to guest house. Apart from Amber Fort everything else is in walking distance from each other.

Our wannabe rickshaw arrived. We went outside and told him we decided to go only to Amber Fort and then City Palace and we were willing to give him only 150 Rs for that. He did not see it coming. He was surprised, but started to explain it is not possible for that price and that his price (whatever it was) is fair. He got angry and even went into guest house to dispute with Manoj! It was not very good feeling for us :-( Manoj asked him to leave his house (clearly the manners of those two men were different even for those who do not speak Hindi).

As we went with driver outside Canadian couple came out too, telling him how ridiculous his price was. That did not help him to calm down. He was babbling something about government price list with 385 Rs for similar tour we wanted to make and he wanted us to show it, we just needed to go with him somewhere. No way! Finally he asked for 65 Rs for coming here and I gave him 60 just to get rid of him (even I knew I should not pay him at all).

We went about 200m to find the nearest rickshaw and where Canadians shown us how to haggle properly. Since then amounts we paid to drivers went down :-) Thank you for that and sorry for forgetting your names!

Additional pages are available:

Amber Fort
Afternoon in Jaipur

Amber Fort

Amber Fort is huge! I was not prepared for such a big fort. It shines in the sun and it is beautiful. We were glad we came here.

Slowly we got up, taking photos all the time. Zuzka likes elephants, she would like to have a ride. Maybe later, let's go to explore it now! A lot of people everywhere.

Only inner part is paid. They count visitors and store tickets, probably to recheck later. Paid part is rather small compared to vastness of whole fort. It is decorated differently from anything we have seen before - a lot of mirrors were used to create mosaics.

We spent some time is shade as it is again hot day (All days are hot in India, aren't they?). Then we continued in 3D exploration of corridors, stairs and open spaces. Somehow I missed guide or audio guide... It would be useful.

The biggest surprise was paid toilet. But what kind of toilet! Probably the nicest toilet I have ever seen - wash basin from glass, when I looked at it as I wanted to run water I wavered as it looked like straight glass table :-) And all that amusement for just 5 Rs :-D

As we finished with examination of fort we returned to entrance where we drawn water from machine with name something like Water Max 2000. Really impressive and reassuring :-) Then we went to find rickshaw.

Finding rickshaw was bit more tricky than we expected. There were waiting rickshaws, but all of them were waiting for their customers to finish with Fort. Finally one volunteered to take us (he called us).
"150 Rs"
"No, we paid 100 Rs to get here"
"But I need to come back"
"And why should we pay for it?" and we went away. Now his character was supposed to call us back and he knew the script :-)

BTW you can see this driver in the first post about India. As we arrived to City Palace I asked him if I can take photo of him.

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Notice china's-great-wall-like wall in distance. It went around all hills and it probably needed million people to man it :-)
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School children are everywhere.
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We wanted to visit those gardens, but as we got close enough guard shouted to us it is closed. So we turned around and went away. We have met guy with camera (I notice these things ;-) ) and told him it is closed. "Have you tried baksheesh?" he asked us knowledgeably. We said - no. "Well, I am going to try". I looked later as we were further away and I could not see him anywhere so he probably succeded.
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