2 nights in Jaipur

We headed out of Delhi and along the motorway into Rajasthan, only stopping just outside Delhi at a McDonalds that was along the highway. It got hotter as we got further south, but we stopped again at a Coffee Day that magically appeared along the highway for iced drinks (even though the aircon wasn't working inside so it was actually cooler outside). We got into Jaipur at about 5 and were greeted by almost all of our long-lost travel buddies who had flown ahead. Almost all back together now! We are staying at the Sunder Palace Hotel which is lovely, even if we don't have aircon in our room. We milled around in the hotel for a while until it was time to get ready for the Bollywood party! We had it up on the rooftop terrace and all the girls looked gorgeous decked out in their saris and the boys scrubbed up well too in a variety of kurtas, turbans and skirts. There was a fair bit of drinking going on and not much dancing, as it was just too hot to do anything for most of the night.

In the morning it was already too hot to do much but we forced ourselves to go out to find the post office to send home the stuff we bought in Amritsar, and also my sari and Shane's kurta. We found the PO eventually after we fought our way past the rickshaw drivers, begging children (I think the kids here are taught to ask every foreigner for money) and the crazy traffic. We had our two parcels wrapped and sewn up and posted for only about 2000 rp which is pretty cheap really considering the parcels were over 4kg.

We headed out again a bit later with a bunch of others to see the Amber Fort, which was just outside of town. The fort itself is massive and has several buildings, but we only saw the lower part of it. It was baking hot and not the nicest climb up to the fort, but we paid 150rp to get in and wandered around through the maze of hallways, courtyards and painted rooms. We were so hot and thirsty, but then as we were on our way out, a Coffee Day appeared! (We think Annette conjures them up). We felt 100% better after cafe frappes and headed back down to our rickshaw drivers, who then took us to the Sun Temple (also known as the Monkey Temple). We climbed another hill to the temple, where there was a view over the hazy city, but we didn't stay for the sunset. On the way down, the monkeys started to come out, and we saw a lot of mothers with tiny babies. We didn't have anything to feed them so they didn't come near us, but they were very cute.

Jaipur is a big dirty city but it has some amazing monuments and it's a shame we only have a day here. It's so hot and hazy that i'm sure the residents are hanging out for the monsoon to cool and clean things.