Jaipur

Jaipur is known as the pink city because in 1876 Maharaja Ram Singh had the entire city painted pink, the colour of hospitality, to welcome the prince of Wales. The tradition has been maintained and they still have very strict rules about keeping it this colour. It's more of a burnt orange in my opinion.

Jaipur is a bit too much of a big city to really fall in love with as I did with Udaipur. Lucky for me I was adopted by Jannu who nominated himself as my official tour guide for the weekend. He is an incredibly charismatic rickshaw driver that has great business savvy. He has differentiated himself from the other guides and drivers through a guest book of sorts in which he has the business cards and comments of his customers.

I was blown away by the Janta Manta, an outdoor observatory of instruments developed by Jai Singh in 1728 that do anything from accurately telling the time to charting the annual progress of the sun through the zodiac.


I went to all the tourist hot spots but my favourite was Hawa Mahal (the palace of wind). Hawa Mahal is a fairy tale palace of icing topped turrets. At the time women were expected to observe very strict purdah. The turrets with the trellised windows were designed to allow them to watch the goings on in the town without being observed from outside.

At the city palace (home of the largest silver receptacle) a pigeon decided to leave an enormous 'welcome to Jaipur' present all over my shorts. I decided to quell the rising irritation and rather take it as a sign of good luck for things to come!