Jaipur day 2 and last day of touring India!

Jan 14 

Time goes so fast!  Today is our last day of touring India, and tomorrow we join the wedding party for the 2 day event!   

Today A-jay Sharma is our guide we are headed to the Amer palace, which is a part of a big fort system.  The palace was originally built in the 13th century and was added on to until 1574.  (Many tourist and a lot of signs read Amber fort, but he told us that Amer is correct, but it is used interchangeably with Amber.)  Amer palace is located in the city of Amer, in the hills just outside Jaipur, and it is over 1000 years old.  It was the old capital city of Rajasthan (just like Lansing is the capital city of Michigan) before the population was mostly moved to Jaipur, to become the new capital city, 296 years ago. There is an old wall all around Amer city and up the mountains that is 12 kilometers long (7.46 miles) and we were told that it is the 3rd largest continuous protection wall in the world behind the Great Wall of China and another that I didn’t catch and couldn’t really verify on the internet.

Up on the hill in the background is Amer (Amber) palace.  Sometimes there are so many tourist that they have to walk from here up to the palace.  Thank goodness it wasn’t crowded we got to ride!  

Along the river, just below where we were standing for the picture above this, we saw these wild pigs and piglets.  Our guide told us that they are not aggressive and are pretty much domesticated.   

The picture above is called a stepwell and is for Amer town which is below the palace.  During the monsoon season these fill up with water, and this particular one had a small underground source.  Each day the women came here to get the water.  The steps are like they are because the water can reach to the top or drop very low.  Imagine women carrying water jugs on top of their heads going up and down these steps. (We may have showed a different one earlier in the blog.)

This old Krishna Meera Temple, built in 1599-1608, is below the palace and fort.  We did not have a chance to visit it, but it supposed to have beautiful architecture inside and out. 

As soon as we arrived in the main courtyard of the palace, we saw multiple elephants.  They are used to bring tourists up a steep incline from the town below to the palace.  

Throughout the palace , we saw many many bride and grooms taking pictures.  Many had multiple photographers and lighting setups.  We thought it was overkill, but then we went to Emily’s wedding the next day and realized that an army of photographers was pretty normal. 

Here we are in front of the main entrance to the inner palace.  If you look closely, there is a bridal couple under each of the 2 side arches, sitting on the steps in the center and walking up to it.  All of them are having a photo shoot! 

You can see the outline of that 12 kilometer city wall. 

I thought this was a cool picture of the palace walls and architecture. 

Christine and I are sitting in the queen’s private hot tub-sans water! 

A look at the palace courtyard from an upper veranda. 

This small building was where the noble women stood to look down on the courtyard and not be seen.  I mostly put this picture in because I edited out the 5 people standing there, but their shadows remained on the ground! 

Ceremonial women’s gowns were so heavily embroidered and bejeweled that they couldn’t walk without help. This wheelchair like thing was used to pull them around the palace.

Behind us in the picture above, and then closeup in the 3 pictures below is the winter palace.  Within a palace people lived in different parts depending on the season.  This was mostly because summer temperatures could reach over 130 degrees, then the winter nights could dip to the low 30s and sometimes below.  

This winter palace is the most ornate section of the palace.  Imagine the silver, gold and precious/semi precious walls lit up with candles and the doorways hung with huge tapestries! 

Christine is very good at seeing detail or angles that would make great pictures.  Here she is in action! 

This was the public hall where people came to tell their troubles to the king. 

We were at the palace on a holiday, and it is the tradition for Indian Hindus (and maybe other religions, but I am not sure), to cook and then bring the food to the temples and share it with everyone.   This was in the courtyard of the palace and Christine and I partook in the food. It was veggies, beans and some kind of fried pepper.   I thought it reminded me of community pot lucks.  The belief is that you give freely and maybe the gods will smile down on you and bless you in some way. 

After the Amer palace and some photo stops at a couple pretty places that we had already seen yesterday and last night….and since we keep on moving and touring…. we went to an awesome outdoor observatory called Jantar Mantar.   The observatory had 19 astronomical instruments commissioned by the founding king of Jaipur - Sawai Jai Singh in the 18th century.  

This sundial constructed all that long ago and only adjusted to current India time, was accurate to the minute.  

This is a larger sundial and it is still accurate to 20 seconds. 

I copied this text from a plaque by this device.  Above is a Nadivalaya has two circular plates, facing North and South which are its dials The wall of the plates is inclined towards the South at such an angle that the instrument remains parallel to the plane of the Earth's equator. The rods(gnomon) emerging perpendicularly from the plates are parallel to the axis of rotation of the Earth. The shadows of the rods move along the scales on the dial plates, indicating the local time.

Each dial plate is divided into three circular scales, two of which have markings for the hours and minutes. The third scale is marked for the determination of the ghatis and palas (zenith distance). To the time indicated by the circuiar scale, a correction factor as displayed for the day at the Observatory, needs to be added to obtain the clock time

The dial plate facing south is sunlit from the autumn equinox to the spring equinox and is to be used for telling the time. The dial plate facing North is sunlit from the spring equinox to the autumn equinox and is to be used for the purpose.

At the observatory was also instruments to determine the different zodiac signs. Our guide told us that the zodiac signs were important in his society.  Christine is showing you that she is a Leo.   The structure below uses the sun to tell which zodiac sign we are currently in. 

Next stop….we headed to the city palace, it is still an active palace.  Most of the palace did not allow photography so I don’t have many pictures of the interesting outfits and the beautiful embroidered clothes, rugs, beddings and tapestries.  There is still a Royal line in Jaipur and they still run many buildings and tourist sights.  Christine described this in an earlier post.  

This part of the palace you see is still the main residence of they royal family. 

This courtyard in the palace has residence buildings on the left and an audience hall on the right.  

This peacock gate was one of 4 intricate doors off of the main courtyard. 

What!!! Walking through the palace, we almost passed our own family without seeing them!!! We didn’t know that they were going to be there and it was so much fun running into them.  Only 7000 miles from home.   Here is Christine with Sarah and Phil Tallo. 

Our sister Kathy and her husband Chris got to gabbing with our guide for the day. 

Last, but not least, we had a magical night on the roof top of the hotel.  Not only was it a kite festival that people come around the world for, it is also an important Indian holiday. It is known as Makar Sankranti or Uttarayan, and is a vibrant and joyous festival celebrated with great enthusiasm in India. Falling on the 14th or 15th of January every year, Uttarayan marks the end of the winter solstice and the beginning of longer, sunnier days.  Weddings don’t take place in India from December 15-January 14th.  Wedding season starts Jan 15!   So here we are! 

From our hotel  rooftop, we could see tens of thousands of kites, with Chinese lanterns and fireworks as the sun went down.   The whole city was celebrating.  

You can see people on rooftops everywhere, even the hotel employees we flying kites and lighting lanterns!

Enjoying the show - we had a smaller version of the kites being flown our first night here, but this was 10x more!  It is sort of a shame pictures can’t do it justice. 

Launching a lantern off of the hotel roof. 

I think what I liked best about the night was that everyone was smiling like this! 

Fireworks and lanterns are lighting up the sky.

The fireworks went on for a long time.  Over an hour and all over the city.  I don’t think any of them were”official”, it was just everyone participating. 

~ Mary ~