Jaipur Day 2

For our last day in Jaipur, we got a car to take us around to other notable sights and eventually drop us off at the airport. Jaipur may be a fairly compact city (unlike, say, Delhi), but we still didn't see anywhere near everything... we had enough time to spend an hour or so at a few more places before we said farewell.

The first spot was the Birla Mandir. The Birlas were a big industrial family, controlling a bunch of factories throughout the country, and decided to build their own temple here. It's a Hindu temple, with similar structure to the others we've seen so far in terms of having lots and lots of carvings on the exterior. But there was one thing particularly interesting about this one: instead of simply being decorated with lots of Hindu deities as usual, one archway was decorated entirely foreign religious figures: Jesus Christ, Madonna with Christ, St Peter and St Francis, Zarathustra, Confucius, Buddha, Moses holding the 10 commandments, and... Socrates? Socrates seemed somewhat out of place there, but still pretty cool. The interior had marble engravings of various events of religious significance, but also had their eyes (and only their eyes) painted. Which was... kinda creepy. We had to take our shoes off to enter (as was common), and it cost 1 rupee each pair to store them. Unfortunately we only had 100 rupee notes, and the shoekeeper was quite unhappy in making change.

Our next stop was the Albert Hall Museum. It was constructed in the late 19th century, in honor of Albert's visit to Jaipur, in an odd mix of Hindu, Mughal, and British architecture styles. The museum had a bunch of artifacts from the region: pottery, clothing, instruments, weapons. It had many stylized prints and murals both of historic and mythical events. It also had some random pieces from Japan, Egypt, and Ethiopia. Just a general, small history museum mostly focused on Rajasthan. Was worth going.

Our final tourist stop was at the City Palace, which we think was private and still owned by the royal family but weren't sure. We only wandered around the exteriors and courtyards of the palace (to see the interiors cost six times as much, and we weren't sure we had the time anyway)... but there was much to see. A lot of the gates and arches were elaborately decorated with peacocks or elephants. The interior palace temple was converted into a textile display... featuring historic Rajasthani dress, including the billiards outfit of one of the kings. We didn't know there was such a thing as a specific billiards outfit... which is probably why we're so bad at it. This king was so enthralled with the game (introduced by the British in the early 19th century) that he converted several parts of the palace into billiards rooms. The palace armory featured a wide variety of weapons, including a display of daggers at the entrance arranged to spell HELLO and one at the exit spelled GDBY. Cute. Barry struggled to figure out what exactly a scimitar is... given nearly identical curved swords were labeled "Iranian scimitar" and "Iranian sword". There was also an artisan shop inside the palace at which we bought a few more souvenirs.

Lastly, we wanted to stop at a bazaar to check out some block print clothing - think printing press, but for clothing designs. This is one thing Jaipur is known for. But our driver convinced us to go to a factory on the exterior of the city (right by the airport - and we were running a bit late on time, so it seemed sensible). Unfortunately, the factory only sold cloth by the meter - not any readymade items like shirts or scarves - and Tina didn't want to devote future time to sewing. Kind of a letdown, so we just went to the airport instead.

Naturally, when we get through security at the airport, we learn that our flight is delayed by 40 minutes... so maybe we had time for that bazaar shop after all. So it goes.

Our next post will be from our last destination of this journey: Mumbai.Read more