Amber Fort

Painting the ceiling, womens' quarters, Amber Fort - pic by Rachel.

We're currently in Fenghuang, Hunan Province. I'm trying to upload some Hong Kong and China pix as I write - wish me luck. Meanwhile, another India flashback:

The most magnificent sight in the Jaipur area is Amber Fort, which had served as the seat of Amber state before the construction of Jaipur. It's a vast, sandstone stronghold spreading across the top of a bluff, impressive both for its defensive aspect and for its graceful Mughal-era style, combining elements of both Hindu and Muslim artistry. Walking around inside the fort, you can get pleasantly lost in the winding passageways and hidden chambers, especially in the mazelike womens' quarters. Emerging into the courtyards you see blazes of color - banners and saris - against the honey-colored stone. Here are a few pictures.

Mughal garden, Amber Fort courtyard

Mirror, Hall of Private Audiences, Amber Fort

Amber Fort photo set on our Flickr page is here.

Jaipur: Jantar Mantar

In between running a kingdom, founding a city, and commanding an imperial army, Jai Singh II managed to keep himself busy with astrological pursuits - overseeing the construction of five observatories scattered across northern India, of which the largest is in Jaipur. Visiting, you walk amongst fantastically big and odd-looking instruments designed to monitor the movements of the sun and the stars. We had a guide to explain the function of each of the (impressively sophisticated) devices, but I'm not sure I can remember everything he told us.

The concave structure above is actually half an instrument, separated to allow the court astronomers to walk in amongst its sections for better observation. Observation of what, I don't know.

I do know that the tower below is the world's largest sundial:

It's so precise that you can actually see the sun moving across it, counting the seconds. The actual dial part is a much larger version of the one pictured here (which served as a prototype):

Here's me with a smaller sundail calibrated to track the progress of the astrological period for Leo - my sign:

Finally, this wasn't actually in the observatory, but we thought this was a particularly well-dressed cow:

Jaipur: The Hawa Mahal

Jaipur from behind purdah: view through colored glass at the Hawa Mahal

The Rajputs - Rajasthan's historic warrior clans - were fiercely Hindu, but culturally they were affected by centuries of contact with Muslim traders and invaders. One Muslim tradition the Rajputs adopted was purdah, the practice by which women were to be kept out of the sight of men. The women of Jaipur's court observed a strict form of purdah, which had the effect of isolating them from the life of the city.

Both to mitigate and to facilitate this isolation, Maharajah Sawaj Pratap Singh ordered the construction in 1799 of the Hawa Mahal, a palace whose primary purpose was to serve as a sort of pink sandstone veil for the royal women. It's a virtually flat, five-story high building, an elegantly carved screen full of tiny windows, behind which the court women would sit to observe the action on the streets below. Here are a few pictures - the photo above, which is one of my favorites, is by Rachel, as is the last one below.

Jaipur: Pics from the Pink City

We arrived in Jaipur after a pair of short flights on Kingfisher Airlines, each of which afforded the opportunity to watch the first half of an entertaining Bollywood film whose title - and ending - we never managed to catch. About half of the passengers from the small plane disembarked with us, and together we were the only people in the terminal that evening.

During the taxi ride into the city center, we passed maybe a dozen brightly lit processions and outdoor banquet halls: wedding ceremonies held on Valentine's day, featuring turbaned grooms riding atop fantastically decorated white horses or elephants, preceeded by marching bands, attendants carrying giant lanterns, and guests in their finest clothes. Fireworks spotted the dark sky. It was an impressive introduction to a city that proved to be one of the most intense places - for better and for worse - we would visit in India.

Jaipur is one of the former princely states of Rajasthan, each of which was ruled by a Hindu maharaja in the days before Indian independence. Rajasthan's history is punctuated by stark and often militaristic forms of chivalry, tested by conflicts among the various states, but especially by the complex dance between the maharajas and the Mughal emperors, as the former variously fought to the death to maintain their states' independence, or sought to accomodate and adapt to Mughal power when necessary. Jaipur's founder, Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, built the city as a new capital after moving from nearby Amber fort (about which more later) in the early 18th century. Jai Singh, following family tradition, secured his kingdom's position through judicious diplomacy with the Mughal emporers - even serving as a top general to the notorious Emperor Aurangzeb, who rewarded him with the title "Sawai," meaning "one-and-a-quarter," indicating that the maharaja was distinctly greater than the average man.

A later maharaja had Jaipur's old city painted pink to welcome the Prince of Wales when he visited in 1853; the tradition has continued, and one of the most interesting aspects of visiting the city is walking around the old town, which hosts a series of bazaars with varying specialities depending on the street. It's an amazing experience, full of sensory overload brought on by the intense colors, smells, and sounds, the painted elephants and cart-pulling camels, the traffic and the touts, and the arched arcades tunneling chaotically through the dusty and glowing pink buildings all around.

The hassle in Jaipur - from vendors, rickshaw drivers, and random passers-by - gets exhausting after a while, and the city was also our first introduction to the cultural difference between northern and southern India, one aspect of which is that northerners are often noticeably unfriendly compared to their counterparts in Kerala. But as a place to experience, it's incredible.

The images from Jaipur are worth a few posts. Here are some pics from our day wandering around the pink city. All photos in this post, except for the pink shutters and the turban vendor, are by Rachel. More in later posts.

009 in Udaipur

First post since we arrived in Rajasthan - no picture uploads yet, but I wanted to mention that we're here. We spent two days in Jaipur, which is full of extraordinary sights - Amber fort, the Hawa Mahal palace, the surreal Jantar Mantar observatory, and the Pink City - the old town, throbbing with activity and overflowing with color. We're very glad to have seen it but we were also very glad to leave after two days, as it's the most hassle-loaded, annoying place we've been in India thus far.

We're currently in Udaipur, an altogether more laid-back and lovely city, with white buildings tumbling down to a (somewhat dried-up) lake, multitudes of rooftop restaurants, and continuous showings of Octopussy, which was filmed here. Even our room number (noted in the post title) is on-theme. Our guesthouse here is the best we've had since we came to India, and it's going to be hard to leave, but we're off to Jodhpur tomorrow and then to Jaisalmer the day after that, from where we'll be doing as everyone else does and heading off for a camel safari. Will try to post some pics when we have a chance - our two weeks in the north of India are shaping up to be kind of a whirlwind...