Still shell shocked from our Pushkar episode, we headed upto Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. As soon as you enter the city, you know its a capital, bustling, noisey and of course dirty. We were due to stay here for 2 nights with the usual tourist stuff in the daytime. We arrived late afternoon on the 25th so our options to do stuff werequite limited. The hotel we were put up in was ok, by now we had got used to rooms being totally random and this one was no different. At first glance you think, "hmm ok, bed, clean, lights that work", then you step into the bathroom.....whoever took on the job of designing this masterpiece of a hotel really didnt know what they were doing (note sarcasm), the bathroom could have been no more than 2 metres by 1.5 metres with one whole wall being the window, so as you can imagine, the people living opposite get a good old show when people take showers, haha. After dropping our things off our driver took us on a little tour of the city, it seems to be quite a busy place, a lot of construction going on and big name companies line the streets, there seems to be money in this place. Our main goal for the rest of the afternoon was to get our Pushkar gifts sent home, boy was that a task. First you get you parcel packed by the guy at the door, he doesnt just pack it though, he puts it in a box, then wraps it in plastic, oh and some string thrown in too, he then...wait for it......gets another guy to HAND sew a linen cover for the entire parcel, you dont get that with royal mail now do you? After that you go to the till pay your rupees to either send it by sea (2.5 months) or air (2 weeks) then be on your way.

Day 2 was spent going to the Amber palace and the pink city (Old Jaipur). If we are honest the amber palace was pretty cool, its within a fort (yay another fort) which then has a god knows how high wall going round the perimeter which seems to go on for miles and miles, bit like a miniture great wall of china, quite impressive. Of course to get into the palace you had to pay and yep, being tourists we piad about 5 times as much as the locals, cant see that working back home can you? Despite the price, it was nice to go see. Oh yeah, ha ha, as we left the palace, a guy comes up asking for money, Shenel then gives him a few ruppes (coins) he then looks at her, pulls out a Euro and asks her to change it, ha ha, so now we are walking money exchanges too, classic. After the palace we headed back to our driver Jeet, he took us around the old town then back to the hotel. Apart from what we did, there wasnt a hell of a lot to do in Jaipur unless you were coming for business reasons.

Next stop the home of the Taj Mahal - Agra.

D & S