Rajasthan - Saturday

Journey into Rajasthan

My trip began sharply at 6:30 am. Amerjit had a little larger car this time, about the size of a Dodge Neon. The radio and a/c worked a little better than the haltchback. The journey was 275 km or about 170 miles in total.


It took a little over 2 hours to get to the state of Rajasthan. The landscape changed immediately with a small mountain range and much more vegetation. There was a stretch of about a mile of a herd of cattle walking in a lane of traffic. Then came camel after camel pulling carts. It is a dangerous drive weaving in and out of trucks, cattle and motorcycles going in and out of small towns. There is no chance of using the cruise control. If you take your eyes off the road for a second it could be an accident. The total drive including a stop for breakfast was 6.5 hours. It was the longest I have sat in a car in a long time. At breakfast Amajit joined me and I ended up paying for both of us. Later in the day I called Vihbuti and she said it was customary to pay for the drivers food on the road for a long trip or just give them some money. Later in the trip I would have been better giving him some money as the meals were more and more expensive.

We also stopped at a yellow box on the side of the road. Then Amarjit said 5 minutes and he brought a pouch with him. I saw some money exchanged and he came back out. I don’t know what was going on, but we did a pass a couple more of these yellow box stations on the trip.

Once we got with 5 km from Jaipur the elephants starting appearing. I found out later that there are 160 elephants in the city of Jaipur. Most are used for tourism carrying people around. I was hoping to take an elephant ride up to the Amber fort, but it is currently 9 days of festivals going on and the elephants are being used for other purposes.

The drive in we saw most of the sites. We were a little lost trying to find the hotel, but it was an enjoyable scenenic tour of the city for me. We stopped to ask for directions about 7 times before we found it.

The Amber Fort looked like it was surrounded by a mini Great Wall of China. It covered both sides of the mountain range stretching for quite a distance.

We kept driving and saw a building in the middle of a lake, the Jal Mahal. It looked like it was floating. He pulled over for me to take a few pics. Right then I was attached by a lady wanting me to take a pic of her. Then wanting change. Then 3 more guys game to sell something. I made a mad dash back for the car.



Jaipur is also known as the pink city. The old part of Jaipur, 9 square blocks, was painted pink to welcome a London King back in the 1700’s. Now it is mostly a salmon color. Also Jaipur is the first city to be engineered to have straight streets and blocks.

At the hotel my luggage was scanned like at the airport and I had to go through a metal detector. At the receptionist I was asked to fill out some paperwork and a lady to the left of me said “Mr. Jason” and I saw a thumb coming towards. I ducked and she nailed me on the side of the forehead. I then saw she had some orange ink and then she got me a second time right in the middle of my forehead.

The hotel was a Sheraton and was very nice. I had a poolside room and was able to use my points to pay for the room. There were no other plans until 5:30 so I decided to take a dip in the pool. I took my sandals off and started walking towards the pool. I instantly burned my feet again. I tip toed quickly to the pool and jumped in. I could tell the different in the sun in the small difference. It is probably the combination of being south and less air pollution. After 20 minutes in the sun I was starting to turn pink.

At 5:30 we left to eat at Chokhi Dhani for supper. It is Rajasthani food served in traditional style. This was the highlight of the trip for me. The place is like a mini Renaissance Fair for Indians. It was 350 or $7 for each of use to get in. As soon as you enter they hit you in the forehead with a red dot and then put rice on it. That lasted for about a half an hour before I sweat it off. We got there around 6:15 but our meal was scheduled for 8. This is a busy spot and meals are time out. There were 5 areas were girls were doing traditional dances everything from spinning in circles, to dancing with large knifes in their mouths, to balancing 7 bowls on their heads. I also took a camel ride. They are a much bigger animal than I thought. I had Amerjit take a picture and the guide through his turbin on my head. When the camel goes to lay down so you can get off it lays it front side to the ground first. I thought I was going to tumble over as it is about a 60 degrees angle when the camel’s front end is down and its back end is still standing. There were no handles to hang onto. After waiting around a little longer watching a puppet show, magic show, and some more dancing it was finally time to eat.

First we had to take our shoes off to go inside. Then we washed our hands from a guy pouring water out of a genie looking bottle. We go inside and it is many long tables aoub 12 inches off the floor. We sat Indian style at the table. First there was a big round plate with come side dishes on it and 7 empty bowls. After a couple of minutes they came around and starting filling out the bowls. Then 5 different kinds of bread and 3 deserts. It was all you can eat. You could not refuse to take anything. The dishes were quite mild on the spicy side. After about a half an hour we were done. Then walked around some more. Somehow I lost my camera lens cap during all the picture taking and walking around.