Jaipur

We flew back to Delhi and stayed in a nice hotel. We are well at Alfa Spice but went back to our room before the music started since we were to head out for Jaipur early in the morning.

On the road to Jaipur from Delhi we stopped at a roadside “hotel” for tea and parathas. This photo is the hotel part of the establishment.



Olga said it was very comfortable. I really want to learn to make parathas.



The drive was long and difficult. The Delhi-Jaipur road is really the main road between Delhi and Mumbai so there is a huge amount of traffic and you are lucky to average 30mph. We had our first view of a camel.




Traffic is very hectic. Here is a parent or servant getting 5 kids across the road.

The Observatory of Jai Singh is amazing. The Maharaja was interested in astronomy and astrology (I wonder when these became two?) so he could pinpoint the astrological sign and time of any event.





This is a sun dial accurate to 2 seconds.



This is a miniature of the big one. It is accurate to 20 seconds. Where the middle incline's shadow falls on the curved surface indicates the time – AM to the left and PM to the right.

About time in India. It is a big country with only one time zone but each city has its own adjustment so that Jaipur is 24 minutes off the national time in India.



The Ram Yantra measures the altitude and azimuth of the sun. There are two of these devices so if the sun's shadow falls in a hole in one of the devices it falls on the surface of the other. This makes it possible for someone to get a really close look at the reading. When the sun is at 45 degrees in the sky the shadow of the tip of the rod is at the junction of the horizontal and vertical surfaces.




This is the Welcome Palace of the main palace in Jaipur. Those are solid silver water jars so that when the Maharaja traveled he always brought his own water.



Jaipur is called the Red City. A lot of the old city architecture looks like this but a little less fancy.





In the evening we went to a restaurant with entertainment.





It was very well done and some of the tourist women got up to dance too.









The next morning we visited the Amber Fort. It is huge and only housed perhaps 200 people in all, including servants.





This was our mode of transportation up to the fort.

This is a herb garden.



The elephants are allowed to make 5 trips a day. Trips are made only in the early morning and late afternoon.

What is red is sand stone and local, what is white is marble and from Iran.




This is the entrance to the main living quarters. There was a lot of technology in his palace. The shot below is where he spent his days. The walls are all covered with convex mirrors to better distribute light.



The black pipe across the top was a water pipe that dripped water all along its length. Below the pipe were hanging many thin ropes that absorbed the dripping water. Something mechanical moved the ropes back and forth and created an air-conditioning effect.


The Maharaja's wives lived in separate apartment but spent a good bit of the day together is a communal courtyard.



He had a dozen or so wives and a much larger number of concubines.

After the Amber Fort we made another long drive to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.