The Hotel Umaid Bhawan is very agreeable in most respects, but is built with marble floors which amplify every sound. As our room is on the same floor as the rooftop restaurant we are awoken at 6.30 a.m. by the kitchen team who are apparently very happy in their work. Time to get up and get on! Outside there is fog - the locals still consider this to be winter. Our car is booked for a trip up the hill to the Amber Fort - hopefully the mist will lift before we get there. We ask the driver to stop where we can by batteries so he pulls up in front of a hole in the wall, from which a man emerges. When asked he immediately produces batteries for about a third of the price in the UK and hands them through the car window.
As the car climbs towards the Fort the fog starts to lift and we see what all the fuss is about. The driver stops for a photo op and immediately two guys with a baby elephant appear offering to take our pictures for a vast fee. While we talk our way out of that a snake charmer sets out his stall(?) on the pavement behind us. [Note for Ann McIvor - there are no snake pics in this blog] We drive on to the car park where the steps up to the Fort begin. This crosses the road up which dozens of elephants trudge carrying idle tourists. Two days ago two Korean tourists were trampled when two elephants started to fight. The local paper has pictures of them in hospital beds on the front page!
We are probably lucky thet the low cloud is keeping the temperature down as there is quite a lot of walking and climbing to do as we explore. As the morning passes the place fills up with people and some of the passageways get quite claustrophobic. Towards lunchtime culture fatige sets in and we head back to the car. We have to wait several minutes for a gap in the traffic at the elephant crossing. We drove back through the city of Jaipur, the maddest traffic that we have seen yet - the traffic includes horse drawn carts, elephants, camels, donkeys and pigs. It was now quite hot so we opted for lunch in a shady corner of the hotel's own roof-top restaurant followed by a siesta.
In the evening we had booked a "Pink City by Night Tour2 - run by the state tourist authority and starting at a hotel about half a mile away. After a short wait a ramshackle coach appeared and we were invited on board. Eventually a Spanish girl boarded too and the coach set off with no explanation. We went to the railway station, the bus station and the main tourist office collecting a few people at each. Eventually a guide climbed on board but he must have been the quietest man in India - from two rows back on the bus he was utterly inaudible. Every 5 minutes or so we were ushered off the bus to admire some statue or building and finally we were taken several miles up a rutted and potholed cart track to a fort overlooking the city where a buffet suppr was laid on and the bar sold beers. The meal was quite good and the place seemed clean enough. By the time we had returned down the cart track and through the city it was almost midnight - well past our bedtime.
The Hotel Umaid Bhawan is very agreeable in most respects, but is built with marble floors which amplify every sound. As our room is on the same floor as the rooftop restaurant we are awoken at 6.30 a.m. by the kitchen team who are apparently very happy in their work. Time to get up and get on! Outside there is fog - the locals still consider this to be winter. Our car is booked for a trip up the hill to the Amber Fort - hopefully the mist will lift before we get there. We ask the driver to stop where we can by batteries so he pulls up in front of a hole in the wall, from which a man emerges. When asked he immediately produces batteries for about a third of the price in the UK and hands them through the car window.
As the car climbs towards the Fort the fog starts to lift and we see what all the fuss is about. The driver stops for a photo op and immediately two guys with a baby elephant appear offering to take our pictures for a vast fee. While we talk our way out of that a snake charmer sets out his stall(?) on the pavement behind us. [Note for Ann McIvor - there are no snake pics in this blog] We drive on to the car park where the steps up to the Fort begin. This crosses the road up which dozens of elephants trudge carrying idle tourists. Two days ago two Korean tourists were trampled when two elephants started to fight. The local paper has pictures of them in hospital beds on the front page!
We are probably lucky thet the low cloud is keeping the temperature down as there is quite a lot of walking and climbing to do as we explore. As the morning passes the place fills up with people and some of the passageways get quite claustrophobic. Towards lunchtime culture fatige sets in and we head back to the car. We have to wait several minutes for a gap in the traffic at the elephant crossing. We drove back through the city of Jaipur, the maddest traffic that we have seen yet - the traffic includes horse drawn carts, elephants, camels, donkeys and pigs. It was now quite hot so we opted for lunch in a shady corner of the hotel's own roof-top restaurant followed by a siesta.
In the evening we had booked a "Pink City by Night Tour2 - run by the state tourist authority and starting at a hotel about half a mile away. After a short wait a ramshackle coach appeared and we were invited on board. Eventually a Spanish girl boarded too and the coach set off with no explanation. We went to the railway station, the bus station and the main tourist office collecting a few people at each. Eventually a guide climbed on board but he must have been the quietest man in India - from two rows back on the bus he was utterly inaudible. Every 5 minutes or so we were ushered off the bus to admire some statue or building and finally we were taken several miles up a rutted and potholed cart track to a fort overlooking the city where a buffet suppr was laid on and the bar sold beers. The meal was quite good and the place seemed clean enough. By the time we had returned down the cart track and through the city it was almost midnight - well past our bedtime.
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