Tuesday, 29th October 2019 – Jaipur – Dave and Annette in India and Nepal

Today was our final day in Jaipur and we went to see some more of the sites.

Highlights included a mother trying to drop a brick on her son’s foot, a Stepping Well, the Amber Palace, a palace in a lake, wild monkeys and Dave becoming a power guru with karma.

We were trying to get to the Amber Palace which is Jaipur’s number one tourist attraction. Unfortunately so was everyone else. The palace is, inevitably, at the top of a hill and there are only three ways in. You can walk, you can take an elephant ride or you can drive up.

The elephant option looks good fun but animal rights groups have criticised the use of elephants because carrying passengers can cause them lasting injuries. Walking up ran the risk of causing lasting injuries to us so we opted instead for driving up.

The road in is one way, narrow and bottlenecks at various stages. We got stuck for half an hour or so but it proved very fortuitous as we were right outside a Stepping Well. We’ve never seen one before and I was blown away by the architecture which looks like something out of an Escher drawing. You wouldn’t want to use the water now but people used to get all of their water from here. And in times of attack, the local royalty used to hide their treasure in the pool.

Opposite the well there was a temple which overlooked a few houses. The women do a lot of the hard work in India and I counted one of the two women carrying nine bricks in a bowl on her head. It would have been ten but one fell out as she was struggling to lift it up, just narrowly missing her bare footed son who was trying to help.

Dave impressed by the strength of the women but less so by the brick that missed the boy’s foot by a couple of inches.

The Amber Palace itself was well worth the effort. It’s about seven miles outside of Jaipur, built of sandstone and marble around 1592 and laid out on four levels. In the King’s quarters there was an early form of air conditioning with holes in the walls allowing air to blow onto flowing water that ran through a channel in the floor. Rose petals were added to the water to give what the audio tour described as ‘a scented cascade throughout the palace’.

Further in there was the ladies only area. The queen lived on one side and the other ladies of affection lived on the other. There was a discreet passageway to the rear allowing the ladies of affection to attend to the King’s needs without being seen by the Queen although as one tourist commented pithily, she probably didn’t give a ****.

Not only did the architects come up with air conditioning, they were also masters of camouflage. The arched courtyard was seen as a potent symbol of power back in the day and the Mughal enemy decided it needed to be destroyed. The cunning locals saw the Mughals coming, draped the area with bland fabric and the Mughals were so surprised how boring it all was they just turned around and went home. That’s what the audio tour said anyway so it must be true.

You could do a nice conversion job on this.

What I really liked about the place was how sociable it all was. People wanted to chat to us and often wanted a photo as well. One person even gave me his hat.

On the way back from the Amber Palace we stopped off at the Water Palace, Jai Mahal. You can’t visit the site and it’s not clear when it was built but it’s a five storied building, four of which remain underwater when the lake is full. So a little rising damp but at least it’s pretty.

We finished the day at the Monkey Temple where I was given good karma and turned into a Power Guru by the priests in competing temples.

In case you ever need good karma, the secret is to pour a bowl of water over some marigolds. Then have a priest wave a coconut around your head three times, say a few magic words, tie a bit of string around your wrist, put a blob of dye on your forehead and hold his hand out in a palm up position.

In case you ever need to become a Power Guru it’s much more sophisticated. Instead of the coconut the priest needs to hit you over the head six times with a bunch of peacock feathers with no advance warning.

I’d hate anyone to think this was some sort of money making scan though. When the Guru Giver eventually realised I was telling the truth when I said I had no money on me, he gave me five rupees out of his own pocket for good luck. I couldn’t believe it. The good karma was working already.

If the Monkey Temple was in Britain, the owners would no doubt make sure it was spotless to help draw in the punters. Let’s just say it’s very much not in Britain and leave it at that.

The buildings are impressive enough though and there must be something magical about the water because we saw several people fully immersing themselves in the manky green murk. Personally I’m going to stick to peacock feather flagellation.

That just leaves the monkeys. And that’s definitely the best thing to do with them. In small numbers they are quite cute. When several hundred of them come running down the steps towards you in one go, it’s quite another thing. The noise on the ground as they ran, the calls and hisses they made and their obvious individual and collective strength made me begin to wonder about the efficacy of my power
guru-ness. Shame on me. The good karma kept me safe.