Day 33 Jaipur
Monday January 7th, 2008
Most of the early morning hours were spent talking to America. I hate to see my iPhone bill.
Still not clear what really happened but the Garrets and Wurtzs spent a lot of time at the house cleaning and drying. Our housesitter called our insurance agent Chad and he seemed to get things moving forward. An appraiser and clean-up crew seem to be being sent to the house. The electricity seems to still be out. What a mess this is and so hard to coordinate from afar. I am so grateful to our friends for all of their help. I heard that our neighbor was at the house checking things out – a lock box was to be installed to allow crews access to the house. I have no idea how much damage has been done and I am very concerned.
We grab breakfast from out hotel – it is pretty good and our driver and guide show up at 8am.
It seems we are in a hurry to get to the Amber Fort where we are to take an elephant to the top of the mountain to tour the fort. There are only 180 elephants and they can only make 5 trips a day – the guide says getting there early is imperative as the line can get very long. We stop for a quick photograph of the Windy Palace – a place with 365 windows for air conditioning and to allow women to watch the goings on in Jaipur as they were not allowed to leave the palace.
We drive by the water palace – you cannot enter it – we had seen it yesterday during the camel ride.
The line was not bad. We were lucky according to our guide. There were many vendors – all very persistent. Amazingly behind us was a man and his son that looked very familiar – they had been in the Bangkok airport having lunch next to us – they recognize us. They were from Australia – a traveling cricket team.
They took pictures of us and we did of them – he gave me a card – I will email him with the blog site and some photos when I get internet access again.
Small world!
The ride was fun – near the top were a bunch of photographers with 35mm cameras. Our guide was at the top to meet us – we tipped the driver 100 rupees.
The fort was very interesting – learned about cous-cous(?) curtains – or flowers that hung from doorways to make rooms smell good. Ingenious natural air conditioning using water that ran through channels and a large artificial lake that was used to keep fort cool. There were fresco paintings that were hundreds of years old and had survived sun and weather – they used vegetable extracts for paint – amazing. The guide said a fresco was a wet painting – I guess that means l the women around as they were wearing 20kg of clothing. Secret ramps or passages that lead to the bedrooms from the Maharajas quarters. Saw the remains of a 1000 year old village. Saw the area where the wall was wet. We walked through the apartments of the 12 wives – saw the wheel chairs that were used to move the wives around as they were wearing 20kg of clothing. We saw the area where the 300 unofficial wives were kept. The reason for multiple wives was to 1 forge relationships which increased power and to ensure a male descendant. The current maharaja adopted his grandson in order to ensure offspring. He is very wealthy and spent 20 years in the military – taking only 1 rupee a month in salary and donating the rest to charity. From the fort we could see another fort that was still owned by the maharajah.
We went to a small park where numerous astronomy instruments had been constructed. The maharaja had an interest in astronomy. The instruments provided various information such as time, the location and azimuth of the sun etc. These were used in astrology readings – an interesting dichotomy – science facilitating mysticism. The largest sun dial in the world was here – it was supposed to have an accuracy of 2 seconds but a slight flaw made it accurate only to ~5 minutes – it was too tall and the shadow it cast was not fine enough – the dispersion of light blurred the readings. Actually several instruments had been built twice to correct flaws and a second sundial was constructed smaller but with an accuracy to ~20 seconds.
Next was Palace Museum. A portion of the palace was donated to be used as a museum. There were textiles, weapons, carpets, traditional dress display. The world's largest single piece silver pots. One of the maharajas would only drink water from a specific river in India and when he visited England these pots were used to carry his drinking water. Another interesting display showed to clothing of the maharaja who was 7 ft tall and weighed 500 lbs! He died at age 39.
There was a single flag flying showing the current Maharaja was not in the palace.
We stopped at a gem store. There was a demonstration of polishing and cutting semi-precious and precious stones. The area is well known for that. We knew what to expect and perused the store quickly and were done within 30 minutes – and did not buy anything.
We asked to see a carpet store – we saw a demonstration of how fabric is stamped by hand using vegetable dyes that are very permanent. It was very interesting. Also another demonstration on carpet weaving – this one more complete and informative. There were actually people working on weaving carpets – it was amazing.
They had many different types of wool including camel. I got the sense that we might have overpaid for our carpets but really never started haggling. Based on my memory or carpets seemed to be very good quality and more beautiful than any we saw there. Although they did hold the Guinness world record for a 4400 knot per square inch carpet that they showed us. Even the back of the carpet was soft. It was about 1 by 2 feet but still took years to make.
The girls picked out some pashima(sp?) scarves made from the wool from a goats chin – very soft. I bargained with tem – Pam thinks I did well she thinks they were not pleased with the deal – I think they were fine with it. I told the carpet guy we might come back after dinner. He gave me his card and asked me to call either way.
When we got back in the car our guide said the dinner and dancing show was very near our hotel and started at 7:30. I asked him to call the carpet guy –to let him know we would not be returning. He offered to let me use his phone but I asked him to make the call – eventually he did – he seemed a little disappointed.
Back at the hotel I did a few hours of blogging and we headed to the dinner. It was nice and the folk dancing was cool – balancing 6 pots on the head while balancing on the rim of 2 metal cups. The girls purchased some bangles and Pam was given one that was made in front of her eyes. Very cool! Back to the room and the internet card we had been given did not work so we could not make any calls home or post blogs. Just decided to go to bed – we leave for Agra in the morning.
