Southwest to Jaipur

Super early start this morning - alarms set for 4:30am! Unfortunately most of the trains we're going to catch in India leave at around 6am, so this is going to be a regular feature for us. But we were out the door and in an Uber by 4:45. One consequence of staying so far out of the city centre was that getting to the station was a 30 minute journey, even with zero traffic and ignoring red lights as our driver was doing!

We'd read that finding your way around New Delhi's immense station could even take an hour, though we figured we'd have an easier time of it than that. As it was, I'd researched which platform our train was likely to arrive on, and so we walked straight through and were on the platform by 5:20, with 40 minutes until the train left! Only two guys tried to scam us in the hundred metres between getting out of the Uber and getting on to the platform - just the typical "oh your tickets are invalid, you need to go over here to this (unofficial) ticket window where the officer (my friend) will sell you the proper tickets (at an enormous markup)". I just laughed and walked away both times.

The train arrived at about 5:45 and we boarded - not the crazy rush like in Sri Lanka since the seats are all numbered and reserved. Fairly comfortable, with padded individual seats, air-conditioning and a few power points scattered around. We were even served breakfast on this train! The non-veg option was two deep-fried curried potato things, which had been reheated in the microwave and were pretty soggy. At least it came with bread, butter, honey, chai tea and some random lemon drink thing. Oh and a litre of water each.

We settled in for the four hour ride down to Jaipur, which eventually became a 5.5 hour journey as the train got further and further behind schedule - very common! The landscape between Delhi and Jaipur was incredibly flat and fertile with mostly rice fields. Some poverty around, but the towns we went through mostly just looked like Delhi, just with more rubbish piled about. So much plastic.

Arrived in Jaipur around midday where we met a driver from our hotel who gave us a lift, even though it was only about 400 metres! It was of course a loss leader for him to sell his tours of the local sights at a later point. His prices seemed pretty reasonable, but we decided to just DIY anyway. Uber is just a much safer option in places like this - the driver has no control over the fare to rip you off, going the long way doesn't earn them extra money, your pickup and drop-off points are prearranged, and they can't stop at all of their friends's jewellery and carpet shops.

Again, we're staying in an area with very few tourists, so the people at a nearby thali restaurant got a big surprise when two white people came in and ordered thalis! Like the places we'd eaten at in Delhi, the kitchen here is basically out the front on the pavement, and the tables & chairs are indoors behind it, so you can see your food being cooked which is nice. Tasty food again, particularly the paneer curry - paneer is the cubed Indian cottage cheese.

Grabbed an Uber and headed across town to Jantar Mantar, an observatory dating back to the 16th century. All of the instruments here are large stone and iron constructions, including the world's largest sundial, accurate to within two seconds! There was about 20 different instruments here for various astronomical and astrological purposes, though we didn't want to pay for a guide so felt a bit lost with a lot of it! It wasn't until annoyingly late on that I realised "altitude" in reference to stars actually means "degrees above the horizon", not "distance from the ground". Same same but different. Quite an unusual World Heritage site, then.

From here we went walking around central Jaipur, known as the Pink City. This is because the buildings are all painted pink! This was done to impress the Prince of Wales on one of his visits in I think the 18th century, and they've just kept painting it a pale salmon shade of pink ever since. It's quite unusual to look at, and appealing too. The other main thing we saw in town was the Jawa Mahal, or palace of the winds - a large palace building where the facade has about 700 window holes. This was partly done for ventilation in the hot summers, but also so the palace women could look out on the parades below without having to cover their faces.

Wandered around the streets a bit more, looking at various things, trying different bits of street food, until we eventually headed home via Uber in the late afternoon. Didn't feel like going out again so we just had a few bits and pieces from the hotel's rooftop restaurant for dinner. Tasty enough, but overpriced for what it was.Read more