For once we got a chance to sleep in! We headed out of Ranthambore and caught yet another train to the city of Jaiphur. Luckily this train journey was a short 2 hours and not very crowded. We arrived at the train station to yet again chaos. We took auto-rikshaws to the hotel. Talk about crazy traffic. It is hard to believe that anyone actually gets anywhere. The hotel is nice with a garden so it is nice to know there is a reprieve from the craziness. We walked to the pink city (yet again hoping we do not die!). The pink city is the shopping mecca of northern India with shops everywhere. There are rows upon rows of sahree, gold and textile shops with the additional Nike and Addias mixed in! The next day we went and did a tour of the city palace, which was pretty cool. While we were there literally hundreds of people were decorating the place with flowers and lights. Our first thought was that they were filming a movie but found out there was going to be a wedding there that night. I can't even imagine what it would cost to rent the palace and and for all the elaborate decorations...let alone the whole wedding. We thought about coming back later that night to crash the wedding but they probably have some huge bouncers hired to keep the riff-raff out. Next we took some auto-rikshaws out to the Amber Fort which is an impressive fort in the hills on the outskirts of Jaipur. Came back to the market area and had some samosas at a local restaurant and then did a bit if shopping. The next day we took about an hour auto-rikshaw ride out to a small village called Samode. This is a UNESCO heritage village which is promoting them to keep the village as it is and maintaining their cottage industries. There are lots of shops there to buy everything from bangles to semi-precious stones. The most amazing part was the children...we had an entourage following us the whole time we were there. They were fascinated with us and were so excited to have their pictures taken and then look at them on the screen. It was a nice change to not have them begging...however, they did ask us repeatedly for pens and chocolate. To top off our stay here, we got to go see a Bollywood movie. The movie was half in English half Hindi, so it was pretty easy to follow. It wasn't at all what I expected, there was very little singing and dancing. The story was about a paralyzed magician that was fighting to be granted the right to euthanasia. It was actually pretty good and the crowd really got into it...cheering and whatnot. We went out for a final dinner with our tour group as the rest of them were doing a shorter trip and are heading back to Delhi. So for the rest of our tour of India and Nepal it will just be Jen and I and our guide(s). We are off to Pushkar next which is supposed to be nice and quiet when compared to Jaipur. We will post again soon.