Jaipur

The so called Pink city was our last stop in the Rajasthan. We had one day to visit the city and so decided to rent a rickshaw for the whole day to drive us to the biggest attractions.

Crazy Raja was our driver for the day. He told us all about his personal life and sex dreams during the day. The first stop of our trip was the monkey temple - Galta. The temple is located on the top of a hill, overlooking the city, a 10-15 min walk to the top. On the way up we are amused by the hyper active monkeys, that gave rise to the name monkey temple. On top of the hill we have a great view over the city. The temple itself is not that special (or maybe we've seen too many temples already!).

From there we moved to the water palace. We can only observe it from the distance. It's a beautiful palace located in the middle of a stinky lake. We don't know much about it, since it is not mentioned in the guide and Raja also doesn't know much about it. It was now time to visit a silk factory. That's what happens when they make cheap prices for guiding you during the day. They bring you to shops because they get a commission for taking you there and a percentage of the shopping you make. After the visit to the shop we tell him no more shops. I don't think he liked it, but we don't have time to loose and money to spend...

We finally came to the famous city palace. This palace and all the buildings that surround it are built with sandstone(or they're just painted in pink). It's a beautiful complex, the audioguide (included in the ticket) helps you get a global vision of the story of the maharajas. The collection of clothes and rifles presented during the tour and the sports stories could be a bit better and interesting, but it is enough to provide us with some insight of the Jaipur history. A climb to the Iswari Minar Swarga Sal gives us a closer vision of the pink city and surroundings. Our last stop for the day was in front of the impressive Hawa Mahal-Palace which we don't have much time to visit (and according to Raja it's not worth the visit).

It was then time to, once again, put "our home on our backs" and take the train to Delhi.

Jaipur is a nice city, but as any big Indian city it is too crowded and messy. One more day would have allowed us to see things more carefully but it wouldn't have added much to what we saw.