Today was a touristy day. Annette wanted to get some tops made so we started with a deliberate shopping trip to a fabric place recommended by our driver. The visit started with a demonstration of block printing where two guys were doing three-stage prints on long lengths of fabric at hugely impressive speeds. It then turned out that the company had a much bigger hand printing place out of the city but no-one every went there because of the distance so they brought people in to the city to do the demonstrations instead. We ended up with a very nice block printed elephant at no charge. I’m not sure the elephant is too happy.
The shop itself was an emporium of quite stunning fabrics and we had the now ritual ‘please … sit down, let me tell you about …..’. At first it feels like a hassle when all you want to do is browse around but I’m starting to warm to the idea that it might actually be a genuine courtesy as well as a softening up exercise.
Annette decided on two different fabrics and a pattern she liked, we did the bartering, they measured her up and five hours later she picked up two hand made tops that she’s delighted with. We’ve not really been in enough shops yet to know if what we paid was a good deal or not but when I was out of the way, the guy who was serving us asked Annette what I did for a job, said ‘that explains things’ and that a good deal is when both parties come out feeling slightly unhappy. I think that meant we did okay.
I must be going soft though. When I came to pay I included an extra fiver as a Diwali gift in the hope that it helped the shop have a prosperous and affluent year. Surprisingly, it made the heart feel good.
We used to be able to buy milk fresh from the farm on the Isle of Wight until people were hospitalised because the milk hadn’t been pasteurised. No such risk here. On the way from the shop we saw people on scooters carrying churns of milk directly from the farm to the shops. Our driver was rightly proud of how quickly the milk got from the farm to the consumer and told us that the way the buyers test the quality of the milk is by putting their finger in it. If the milk stays on the finger above the nail when they pull their finger out, it’s okay. If it drains off below the nail it’s not acceptable. Good to know!
Apparently there are royal families all over the place in India, often with more than one in each state. The Royal family in Jaipur live in the Crystal Palace and we opted for a guided tour so that we could get into some of the private rooms. It was all very interesting and definitely worth the visit but my favourite snippet of information was about Maharaja Jai Singh who took the throne in 1699 at the age of just 11.
He was by all the accounts of his PR team, much wiser and wittier than most people of his age and an equally brave soldier. A Mughal emperor bestowed upon him the title of ‘Sawai’ which meant 1.25 times superior to his contemporaries. The title adorns his descendants to this day.
I love the precision of that. One and a quarter times as smart as other people.
I also love how the precision is reflected in the palace. The royal flag flies all the time but if the Royal family is at home, they also fly a second flag above the first with the second flag being exactly one quarter the size of the first.
There’s another hidden gem in Jaipur, not far from the Crystal Palace, known as Jantar Mantar. That should be the name of a character in Star Wars but it is in fact the Astronomical Observatory of Jaipur which was started in 1727 to enable Maharaja Jai Singh identify auspicious dates. It houses numerous astrological instruments including sundials, and water clocks and if that sounds dull, try this. The Great Equatorial Sun Dial is 44 meters long and 27 meters high. That not only makes it the world’s largest sun dial, it shows the time to an accuracy of two seconds.
Not much use as a wrist watch though.
There’s a third famous place in Jaipur called the Palace of the Winds and a café opposite called the Wind View Café. The Palace was built in 1799. It has 953 windows and was built as part of the woman’s section of the City Palace to allow the ladies to watch the streets below unobserved whilst remaining cool from the breeze blowing through the latticework. Our driver told us there was nothing inside worth seeing and we were getting weary by that point so we just viewed it from the café on the other side of the road.
Four floors up, past a very persistent jewellery shop owner who kept coming and telling us (based on no knowledge whatsoever) that our food was nearly ready and that we could then we visit his shop on the way down. The food was good, the steps worth the effort …. but the noise. The combination of street music, the beeping of car horns and the noise of people below meant that we had to shout to the waiter what we wanted to eat. Exciting and invigorating certainly. Restful … not at all.
More fireworks tonight. These guys really are happy to see us.
Dave and Annette in India and Nepal 