Agra, Sariska, and Jaipur Adventures: Part II

Okay, time to finish up recounting my travels! So I finished off describing our second day which we spent driving through Sariska National Park, visiting some temples and doing a little hiking. Early that evening we made the (relatively) short journey of about 1.5-2 hours to Jaipur. WII sent us with a car and driver to use for our time in Jaipur, it was so nice! Usually you have to either take vikrams, these really crowded sort of shared cabs, or haggle for prices with auto- or cycle-rickshaw drivers: not fun! It was really relaxing and nice to have a vehicle to use. We checked into our hostel at about 7 or so, we stayed at the Forest Research Training Institute or something like that. After relaxing for a bit we headed to this big shopping district to grab some dinner and have a look around. Dehradun is a very small city (I've never seen another Westerner there that wasn't affiliated with the Wildlife Institute!), so it was neat to see the wealthier, more developed side of India in the bigger city of Jaipur, the capital of the Rajasthan state. We even found this one store "Always 99" that called itself an American Bargain Store- it was a freakin' Dollar Store! So crazy. I love seeing all the different things in the grocery stores and shops.

We woke up the next morning with lots of plans for a full, busy day of sightseeing! We started off at the Amber Fort, one of three that overlook the city. The view was pretty spectacular. You could also see what our escort told us was "radar" pointed at Pakistan on a nearby hill. We went to the Jaigarh Fort where they have the world's largest wheeled cannon. It was fun to go to the different museums and displays they had around: an armory, different recreations of everyday life for the rulers than lived there. From there, we walked down the hill to the Amer Palace. We didn't get a guide and there wasn't really any information around but it was still just really beautiful architecture and decoration.

The view of Amber Fort from the palace.

Amer Palace.

The view of the city from the palace.

After wandering around the palace an hour or two we drove into the more historic area, called the Pink City for when it was painted entirely pink to celebrate the arrival of Prince Albert in 1856! It had a ton of bazaars and shops. We went to a sweet restaurant and had a delicious lunch. We saw the Hawa Mahal "Palace of the Winds" and the City Palace and Museum. There was a cool Arms and Weapons Museum, the two largest silver urns in the world (Guiness Book of World Records certified!), a Textile Museum etc. All very cool. We spent a lot of time exploring all that and did a little shopping.

City Palace.
Hawa Mahal.

Then at about 6 or 7 we did probably the most fun thing of the day! We went to this really awesome place called Chowki Dhani, a recreared Rajasthani village with dinner and all sorts of things. We did a lot of stereotypical Indian things- rode a camel (my fav!!!), rode an elephant etc. We saw a magician, got our palms read, did traditional Rajsthani folk dancing. We had a huge meal of traditional Rajasthani food. It was awesome!


CAMEL!!!

Rakesh and I trying to do Rajasthani folk dancing!

Rajasthani thali.

Palm reading, haha.

It was really great. We got back to the our hostel at about 11:30, totally beat. We spent some time talking with Rakesh about our plans for the next day etc. It was really interesting talking to him some more about Indian culture, his life, etc. He told us about his arranged marriage (they are still pretty prevalent here). He also said some things that really surprised me. It somehow came up that he and our driver were sharing a room and he mentioned how this was a sacrifice for him because, "It's a personal thing, he is a Muslim and I am a Hindu. Hindus hate Muslims." He went on to say you will never find a Hindu terrorist, only Muslims, it's "part of their religion, so strict." I found it interesting he particularly mentioned Muslims eating of beef as a point of contention (since Hindus consider the cow holy). I mean I had known about the problematic Hindu-Muslim relations in India and had known that Rajasthan was a particularly tense area (some of you may remember reading about the bombings in Jaipur just a few weeks ago) but it was totally different hearing that level of animosity expressed so blatantly and with such nonchalance by an educated, better off citizen. As a disclaimer, I don't know how representative he is of his generation or the population, I just found it rather interesting. We've run into some trouble even planning our next trip to Delhi. We mentioned wanting to go to this famous mosque in New Delhi and a more Muslim frequented bazaar but those plans were quickly nixed by another Hindu person as the bazaar was "too dirty" because of all the Muslims and we didn't really want to go to the mosque.

But enough of my rambling, our final day was also one of my favorites. We spent the morning going to two of my favorite temples so far. The first was called Birla Mandir, a gorgeous temple carved of white marble. It was sponsored by a family of wealthy industrialists and also had some beautiful stained glass depictions of Hindu deities. I couldn't take pictures but they also had carvings of Jesus, Socrates, Confucius, etc., representative of the family's refreshingly pluralistic take on religion. We stayed for some of the rituals, it was really cool. We then visited the Galta Temple, another one dedicated to Hanuman, the monkey god. It was beautifully situated in this gorge, looking like it sprung right out of the rocks. There were monkeys and banana peels everywhere, haha! They actually do feed bananas to all the monkeys there to keep them around and to show respect to Hanuman. There was a sacred bath where all the worshipers were swimming, it was so cool.
Part of Galta Temple.

We finished up the day grabbing some lunch and doing a bit more shopping. We took a regular overnight A/C bus with nice reclining seats home instead of the sleeping compartment and it was loooooads better. We got back at 6:30 AM the next day. I had an amazing time but now I've got lots of work to catch up on!