Spring Break Trip to India Part IV - Amber Fort and Pink City

We met our driver and our guide for the day in the morning on Tuesday.  We reiterated that we wanted to go to the Amber Fort, and then to see the Pink City and to do a little bit of shopping for souvenirs with the girls.  We hoped that we would minimize the amount of "extra stops" by making things clear beforehand.

Driving through the Pink City

We've seen a few times when people, mostly women, would carry their load on their heads.

Shops of the Pink City. This area is for the tourists, and the shops have names in English and are more organized. We've also driven through the area for the locals (there people mostly spread out their goods right on the street but I am sure the prices were much, much lower)

One of our unplanned stops. The palace in the background is standing in the middle of the lake.

Jal Mahal stands in the middle of the lake. Now it is a museum

It didn't start out promising.  The guide took us on a long way around the city and kept pointing things out and asking if we wanted pictures.  We kept saying no.  Finally he seemed to get it, and we started toward the outskirts of town where the Amber Fort was located.  We drove the pink city on our way.  The Pink City was the original city and all the buildings are painted pink - hence the name.  The most famous part of the pink city is the Hawa Mahal.

Hawa Mahal (English translation: "Palace of Winds" or "Palace of the Breeze") is a palace in Jaipur, India, so named because it was essentially a high screen wall built so the women of the royal household could observe street festivals while unseen from the outside. Constructed of red and pink sandstone, the palace sits on the edge of the City Palace, and extends to the zenana, or women's chambers. [Wikipedia]

We got out and took pictures here - and it was a good time of day to do it, before things got too crowded.  The theme of "royal ladies" was one that came up again and again in the palaces and areas we saw.  The royal ladies were always kept separate.  I kept asking our crew of girls if they were glad not to live in those days when they had to hide away from everyone.

Hawa Mahal.

We thought it would be very appropriate to take a picture of all the "royal ladies" in our group in front of Hawa Mahal.

After we took pictures at the Hawa Mahal, we drove to the Amber Fort.  The Fort is in the hills outside the city and the entire area is surrounded by a large wall.  The fort itself is up on the hill and is very impressive.  We had a few options for getting up to the fort.  We chose the free option - to hike up ourselves rather than ride up on elephants or in a jeep.  We wanted the hike, and we didn't want to ride the elephants, since they used saddles that are uncomfortable for the animals.

I was wondering if we would see this in India, and surely we did. He wanted a lot of money though and was unhappy when we gave him some change after watching him literally for 1 minute. More on this later.

Amber fort is right behind us.

This elephant was taken to the Amber Fort to give the tourists a ride up the hill. See this huge saddle on top of his back (most of it is under the red cover)? While elephants are very strong, their backs are not made to carry heavy weights, and those saddles are very heavy.

Amber Fort. You can see a line of elephants (red spots) making their way up the hill.

The gardens in India are beautiful. We can only imagine how it would look like when the fountains are on.

We had a nice hike up the hill and then spent about an hour and a half looking at the fort itself with its palaces and views.  We loved the gardens and a room that looked down over them which was situated so that the breeze always blew through.

There was something majestic about this view. 

We opted out for hiking, though.

The hike was actually quite pleasant

There are lots of stray dogs in India.

Watching the elephants move.

This was the way for going up via jeeps.

We had to wait for about 7-8 minutes before we saw a gap between the elephants big enough to safely cross the road.

Elephants going back out of the Sun Gate to pick up more tourists.

Ganesh Pol Entrance named after the Hindu god Lord Ganesh who removes all obstacles in life,  is the entrance into the private palaces of  Maharajas. It was built in 1621-1627.

This is where Raja's ministers would sit.

In front of Ganesh Pol Entrance

A view into the first main courtyard. This was the place where armies would hold victory parades which was also witnessed by the Royal's family women through the latticed windows (pictured later)

The second courtyard has the 27-pillared Diwan-I-Aam or the Public Audience Hall where Raja (king) would listen to petitions from the public.

A view out from the Audience Hall

Maota Lake and Saffron Garden

See the wall going along one of the mountain ridges across the lake? The mountains around have a lot of those walls.

A ceiling in one of the rooms. Depending from which side you looked, it would change the colors. The same room had another interesting feature: the walls though marble were hollow inside, and so whatever you say into one of the corners (no matter how quietly) could be clearly heard in the diagonally opposite corner.

The third courtyard has Sheesh Mahal or Mirror Palace (right behind us) which was built in 16th century. 

Trying to show Sophie her own reflection in the wall made out of mirror mosaics.

Multi-mirrored ceiling of the Mirror Palace. Beautiful! The interior was designed in such a way that it would glitter brightly in the candle light when in use.

One of the gardens in the fort.

And here are the latticed windows that allowed Royal ladies to watch the military parades without being seen. It is located in the fourth courtyard where the royal women and concubines lived.

They are made out of a single block of marble that was the same marble they used to build Taj Mahal.

A group of tourists with local cleaning women

A beautiful Mughal Garden views from the fourth court or women's quarter.

Here is another wall built on the mountain ridge with the tower on top.

Amazing balance

Some of the carvings of animals on the walls

As we were coming out of the fort, our guide pointed out this interesting black formation under the balcony. Guess what it is?

Beehive! Those are the black honey bees we saw at Mahatma Gandhi memorial gardens.

The kids and Yulia also explored the dungeons of the fort.

They were used for the armies to move quickly from one side to another.

On the side you see three women working. They are weeding the grass. It was about 95 F that day.

After we finished at the fort, we went and saw a demonstration about how they do fabric printing with natural dyes.  We also saw a demonstration about how they make rugs by hand.  It was interesting, but mostly a ploy to sell us rugs.  Our friend, Ramona, wanted to buy a couple, so we sat through the demonstration.  We ended up buying a small rug with a design of the Taj Mahal on it to hang on our wall (in the Russian fashion).  We also bought some silk scarves for the grandmas that were done with the printing technique.

Watching cloth hand printing process

Trying it out (the girls made a little elephant print on a piece of cloth)

Hand making rugs. This rug will take about 4-5 months from start to finish. A man is working on one side (you see him) and a woman on the other. They have to synchronize all of their movements because one doesn't see what the other one is doing.

Neat!

Lina and Taraz decided to try it out.

Lina is one happy little bug!

Those are all handmade rugs. They had the ones that were made out of silk (the one we bought with Taj Mahal is made out of silk also), the ones that were made out of wool, and the ones of camel wool.

After the rug shop, we went to shop along the street.  The older girls had some money they had earned by speaking Russian with the girls we were traveling with.  We gave the twins a little bit of money so they could find something for themselves.  We spent about 45 minutes between a couple of shops and the girls found what they wanted.

The woman from the hotel in Agra had told us about a hotel, the LMB, that had great food and a nice sweet shop.  We went there for lunch.  It was a nice restaurant and most of the patrons were Indian.  The food was traditional thali from Rajasthan and was very good.

Having lunch at LMB restaurant. Every container has a different sauce or vegetable mixture.  Some were spicy, some were sweet.  You mixed them together to make the right flavor.  The white sauces is a yogurt sauce that cleanses the palate of spices.

After our restaurant, we came back to the hotel.  The girls and I swam for awhile, and we just had a relaxing evening.  Yulia and I weren't hungry, so we didn't go eat.  Our girls went with Ramona and her girls for a snack at the restaurant upstairs.

We had a nice day - the right length, and with some great sites and experiences.