Jaipur

Street Food

Agra was a long day. Two trains, two cabs, two different places to sleep, paying way too much to see the Taj, getting carted around by a rickshaw driver who was only interested in stopping in shops that paid HIM, ugh.

So off to Jaipur we went the next morning at a casual 5AM. Ouch! 5AM!? What the hell were we thinking? Who knows. What I do know is that Yvonne definitely had the foresight to book first class AC tickets. I gotta say, I haven't been the biggest fan of chair cars, because it's difficult for me to sleep in a chair, but this was definitely a nice ride. First class means you don't deal with food sellers. They brought me newspaper of my choice to start the ride. All passengers got a rose (of course I know one passenger who was more pleased about that than I), cereal, tea, THEN BREAKFAST, then more tea. I fell asleep after that, but apparently the service continued like this for nearly the whole 6 hour journey. By the time we arrived in Jaipur, I wasn't really feeling refreshed, but I wasn't feeling like I should kill anyone either.

So, here we are, Rajasthan, the so called, land of the kings. It's semidesert. A lot of dirt and dust infiltrating my lungs. It's really hot too. Of course, the only piece of it we saw is Jaipur. Jaipur is known as "the pink city." Apparently, back at somepoint during the British Raj's tenure prince (andrew?) came for a visit and wanted the city to be pretty. It was then decided to paint the city pink. Rather, now it's more of a terra cotta color. But still alright.

Jaipur is also known as the city of palaces. There is a lake palace (that you can't go in), Amber Fort, Tiger Fort, Hawa Mahal (the wind palace), and a large variety of other palaces and forts whose names I can neither remember nor pronounce correctly in the first place. Well, we got some cabbie to take us to the hotel. It was an OK hotel. For the price it was decent enough. We were only there one night en route to Mumbai.

The other thing about Jaipur that one will notice, is the immense shopping area with a dearth of restaurants! I got hungry man! Ah, street food saves the day...