Jaipur-Amritsar, India: 16June07

The autorickshaw who supposed to bring us around didin't turn up at the guest house. So we did the sight seeing ourselves happily. Local transporatation such as bus at Jaipur is easy and not that crowded.
We went to the Wind Palace and astrology central, skipped the City Palace. The Wind Palace got the view of the city. The building itslef looked like a bee hive. The astrology centrel is an amazing place for the ancient knowledge. We engaged a guide and got many useful information such as how does a sun dial works.
We proceed to Amber fort and Joghur fort then. Both forts are said to be extensive and interesting, but unfortunately, we spent so much time at Jaigarh Fort that we left no time for Amber Fort.
The dinner before we left for night train to Amritsar was a very delicious Thali.



View from Jaigarh Fort. The city looks blue instead of pink! But this is a town which is 11km away from Jaipur city central.



The magnificient Amber Fort on the rocky mountain.



The train from Jaipur to Amritsar. There were many Sikh in the train as Amritsar is the beting heart of the Sikh religion.



Golden Temple. The golden dome is said to be gilded with 750kg of pure gold.
Four preiest inside the temple keep up a continuous chant in Punjabi from the Sikh holy books and this is broadcast around the temple complex by loudspeakers.

Jaipur, Rajasthan, India: 15June07

Hindi Movie!

We skipped all the sighseeing and merely wondering around the street, eat street food and went to watch a Hindi movie!

The Indian in the cinema who sat beside of us have more interest on us rather than the movie. He was laughing ike hell when he knows that we don't understand Hindi and we were merely watching at the picture. But it was a comedy, so i wasn't that difficult to knows what was going on without the understanding of language. But the intermission of 20 mintues for a movie was kind of "unbelievable" to me. We only get "intermission" for theatre performance!

Jaipur have small city central and yet very very crowded. In the city central itself, everywhere is people, animals and human powered or motorised vehicles. The cycle rickshaw drivers and auto-rickshaw drivers just wouldn't let us off. Every shops that we passed by, it was always "Come to see my shop. See no money."



You could have an elephant ride on the busy and crowded street!



There was some kind of parade or celebration on the street.



This is how busy was the street during normal weekday and "non-peak hour"!

Jaisalmer-Jaipur, Rajasthan, India: 14June07

The pink city is not pink

We returned to Jaisalmer town central in the afternoon and the hot weather and the camel ride had made us really tired.
The train to Jaipur was in the afternoon. When th train passed by or crossing the desert, we have to cose the window or else the sand would fly into the cabin. So the whole compartment was like a sauna. We were perspiring like hell.
At night, i couldn't really sleep as it was so hot that i couldn't stop sweating! We shared the 8 persons cabin with two families. There were 3 children crying and crying. We couldn't lie down to sleep as well and we got middle and lower berth and it was too early to sleep (but we just got really tired) so everyone was sitting at our berth. In the end, we changed berth with the family and finally we could lie down. By this time, we have started to feel the muscle pains from the camel ride.



Jaipur is Rajasthan's pink city, the capital. However it doesn't look pink to me at all. Indeed, this is the most polluted and most crowded place i have ever been in Rajasthan. (i purposedly took this photo in black and white. Anyway, the city is not pink! It look red, so color doesn't matter!)



'Street scene'. People cooking milk to make sweet by the street, just outside of the sweet shop. Indian like ridiculously sweet Indian candy, a kind of sweet made from milk and a lot of sugar! Some taste ok but most taste weirb to me (and most of the non-Indian).