A tour of Jaipur, Rajastan

Carl Lindquist and Shanetta Payne Ride an elephant to Amber Fort in Jaipur, Rajastan India.

Jaipur, the capital of Rajastan, is a little cleaner, a little better developed and a little more cohesive than much of the rest of India. It’s a little cleaner and a little richer than Delhi, Agra and other Indian cities.

It’s a commercial center an educational center, with several good universities, a transportation center building its first subway, and a historical center. Since the city was only founded in the 1727, its history doesn’t way heavily upon it. A single line of rajas still holds forth from city palace.  Other royal families, who hold no formal political offices, but who still exert a great deal of influence and power, remain in Jodphur and elsewhere in Rajastan providing a certain stability and cohesion.

The view from Amber Fort, complete with elephants, shows its strategic importance.

The Fort is surrounded by parapets and other fortifications

Jaipur is called the Pink City because the walls of its center is made of pink sandstone, and that image was burnished when several pink sandstone gates and monoliths were erected for Prince Albert’s visit in 1857.

Nevertheless, it’s greatest monument is its Amber Fort, which is the color its name, a golden yellow. The fort was first built nearly a thousand years ago, built by royal Hindu families before the founding of the city.  It guards the western approaches to the city on a cleft in the mountains leading to it. Other forts, walls and parapets ring the area, making it defensible against armies far larger in number than defenders.

Kaylee Haywood explores Amber Fort.

We rode a popular elephant ride from the bottom of the valley beneath the fort up to the big monument. It was full of courtyards, smooth rice-paste-washed walls and man secret passages, which allowed rajahs to visit various wives and concubines without making other jealous, according to our guide, Saurav (Sam) Somani, a native of Jaipur.

After a tour of the fort, we explored the downtown area, which included Jantar Mantar,  a 10-acre complex of astrological calculators and sundials constructed by the first maharajah, Jai Singh, in the 1730s. Despite its age and function, the various calculators look like modern-art sculptures.

We also visited city palace, where the rajahs still live. The last one died just last month, and his 12-year-old grandson has been named his successor.

The arrow of sunlight on the brick floor of the celestial calculator at Jantar Mantar,  bottom left,  points to Taurus, letting observers know the current zodiac sign.

A guard watches over visitors at City Palace.

Despite its fairly recent history, or perhaps because of it, Jaipur on the edge of the Thar Desert, is becoming more of a tourist city, a taking-off point for tourists who wish to explore authentic Indian sights and culture while avoiding the squalor of other parts of the country.

It is also a center for shopping and touring. We spent the last part of our afternoon touring the city by rickshaw. And tomorrow we will being seeing more. You can see typical Indian traffic in the video below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYqW-zxo96U

Shenetta Payne and Kalle Haywood enjoy a rickshaw ride.