After lunch and the turban museum we headed back to our van. We still had many more stops for the day- to see a fancy building façade, used by women to stare at the street and not be stared at, to see the City Palace, which is where the current royal family lives, but is mostly now a museum, to visit an old observatory, and go to a parade!
I checked my phone during our van ride. We had e-mailed my Dad the day before, informing him of Sister and FBIL’s engagement. I got a message back from Dad, “Cool. Lumpo”. Yup. He is a man of few words. Two, to be exact, when hearing his daughter got engaged! We laughed over the brevity of it, and continued on our day of fun.
It was the second half of our last full day in Jaipur, but we were still full of energy and ready to see our next stop. After a short drive, we pulled over on the side of a busy street to see Hawa Mahal (Palace of Winds). It is a many-storied pink sandstone wall that overlooks a busy street. Women of the court, of course, were meant to be neither seen nor heard, so they had to stay behind screens that allowed them to view activities without being spotted. No wonder women get stared at some much in this country. If you weren’t allowed to even look at them at one point…. Hawa Mahal was beautiful, and completely filled with windows. Of course the windows, rather than having glass, were carvings designed to shield the woman. After we had viewed the façade, we went on to City Palace.
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| Hawa Mahal (Palace of Winds) |
In 2009 I had taken the same tour, but I was sick and missed viewing City Palace, so it was new to all six of us, and I was very excited to see it. Jai Singh built it. He was the son of the person who built the Amber/Amer fort that we saw earlier in the day. So it was an ancient building still in use. I’m not sure why both forts were built at basically the same time. But rather than decay, this fort is still maintained and used, and new, modern parts have been added.
City Palace is such a large, busy place that it is hard to know where to begin. But City Palace was a living museum. The royal family (whatever that means in India, I’d never heard of them before) still lived there, in one section of the palace. We saw fuzzy photos of them hanging from one wall. Despite being royal, the cameras used for a 1990s family photo shoot looked like it would have been out of date in the 1980s in the US. It really shows how much India has changed these past ten years, how much it has caught up, technology-wise. I’d like to point out that photography was a no-no in many parts of City Palace, so I don’t necessarily remember the order of everything we saw. So the story below is my best guess at the chronology of events.
We entered through a dingy looking yellow wall, which opened to a much more impressive courtyard surrounded by pink walls. Beyond the courtyard you could see the portion of the palace, also yellow in color, in which the royal family lived. It was, of course, off limits to us commoners. Next to the entrance was an ancient, fancy looking cannon, which, to please Mom, FBIL was a good sport and posed for entirely too many pictures next to it.
We moved to the center of the courtyard, which had a large, columned pink structure raised three or four feet above the ground level. Everything is supposed to be sandstone, but it was all painted an orange color, and I couldn’t honestly tell what building material was beneath the paint. The inside had white flowers painted above the cutout walkways and fancy chandeliers hung from the ceiling. Inside the structure were a few vendors, but the corners had tidbits of interesting things to learn.
The side nearest to us had two huge silver jars that we stopped to stare at; they were probably five feet in height. They were used to haul the king’s water supply while traveling, and I believe there were originally seven in total. And you thought your nalgene bottles was sufficient. I wonder how many elephants it took to pull one of those huge, water-filled jars! Apparently they are in the Guinness book of world records for being the largest silver jars in the world. The jars were made by melting down 14,000 silver coins. They are fairly new, because the coins weren’t issued until 1894. They were melted into sheets, and then beaten and shaped.
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| Silver Water Jug |
Rather than taking the natural course and wandering to the opposite side of the structure to see what was there, our tour guide led us to a sharply air conditioned room and hallway that was full of art work and thrones. The room was fantastic, but no photography is allowed, so I can’t remember exact details of what we saw. The artwork was huge, larger than life photographs and paintings commissioned of the various kings. One king wore see-through clothing and looked an awful lot like John Lennon, right down to the circular glasses. Another was incredibly fat. We learned later that his shoulders alone spanned four feet. We walked past royal fans made of peacock feathers, and gazed upon the thrones, which I though were deteriorating and in need of a good seamstress to cut off all of the fraying threads. Our guide moved too rapidly, and, to my annoyance, rather than stopping and waiting, he just let some of us fall back and miss his information.
We exited into a new courtyard, and I was beginning to lose my bearings. He took us to a section to see how artisans worked, painting. It was semi-fun. The art was actually quite beautiful, and they used very tiny, delicate strokes. The guy we watched told us his brushes were made of squirrel hair for the small strokes and camel eye lashes for larger strokes. It was fun to watch until he started pulling painting after painting out, trying to get us to buy them. Annoyed, we did a quick loop around the room- it was full of people doing similar things- before heading out. At an incredibly quick pace, our guide took us to another section, which acted as a museum of clothing. The older men’s clothing looked much more similar to women’s today wear than men’s today wear (for traditional clothes). I guess it must be true of all cultures- women take men’s clothes and first names, but rarely does it go the opposite way. After all, in America’s past, you’d have only heard of men named Ashley, Kelly, or Dana, not women, and only men would have worn pants. But you don’t usually see a trend of men wearing dresses or taking women’s names. Anyhow, I tried to explain that excitement to our tour guide, but he just seemed confused. He also stayed a full room ahead of half of us, so I never once heard his descriptions about any of the clothing.
He was rushing us, and all of us were getting angry. We walked out of the clothes museum, and he walked us right past a sign clearly pointing toward an arms museum. Finally, as the one who organized our group, and the most annoyed, I decided to have a little talk with him.
Now, as I had mentioned in the morning blog of April 7th, our tour guide likes to talk about philosophy. “You can’t change people, so don’t try, you’ll be happier if you just accept them as they are”. So I figured I’d try his advice. I stopped him, and simply said something like, “We can’t change you, but we are feeling rushed and want to spend more time looking at things. If you need to go, you can go and we will manage on our own. We don’t want to change you, if you have to be somewhere else. We’ll be okay without you. But we want to go to that museum we walked past.” Rather than the color draining out of his face, you could see dollar signs floating away from his head. He insisted he wasn’t rushing us, but turned back and took us to the museum.
I’m so glad we went. It was full of shields and armor and old guns, but my very favorite weapon has to be --- the back scratcher! At first we just laughed, and our guide, who was now following me like a puppy, pointed out that they were solid metal. And every display case had a royal back scratcher in it as a weapon! I can just imagine a king, getting ready to go to bed, scratching his back. An invader enters his room. What to do? Thwack! He hits him on the head with the back scratcher!
By the time we left the arms museum, he was back to his normal guide self, and took us across the street to the Royal Observatory. He spent some time, on deaf ears, trying to convince us that Indians invented astrology and clocks, but the rest of his information was pretty interesting.
The observatory was just so different! I really liked it. There were huge sundials, and we accurately found the correct time of day. There were huge spherical pits in the ground, and where the sun’s shadow fell, it told what zodiac sign the sun was in. There were smaller structures, two for each zodiac sign, which were used for even further details. I don’t know much about doing astrology, but it was all very interesting to see. Unfortunately, it was all out under the now-scorching hot sun, and we quickly retreated to the shade and left.
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| Sun's shadow tells the zodiac sign |
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| Something about Aquarius |
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| world's largest sundial (the left side of it) |
We exited City Palace through a courtyard with four magnificent doorways. The first, and best, was covered with peacocks, but all four were beautiful. After taking entirely too many photos, we headed to our van back to the hotel.
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| Peacock Doorway |
We did a very lovely video, recording the hotel's beauty for our family, but unfortunately, Auntie forgot to press the ‘play’ button, so the video will only ever be in our minds. But I assure you it was great. We went to everyone’s rooms, and when the video reached our room, Fez and I stayed. I sat in a chair. I leaned. I almost fell over. It was actually pretty great, because the lean and fall was all in slow motion, like a replay on TV. Too bad we didn’t get that on video.
I was exhausted. The full heat at the observatory was miserable, and I was quite happy to get home and relax, or even sleep, as I had only had three hours the night before. In fact, the parade, which was being held in a couple of hours, held no interest to me. I just wanted to sit away from the sun. In the room I opened a green-canned bottle of Pringles I had bought the day before. They were all broken. I poured them in a bowl and Fez and I ate them like cereal. They don’t taste nearly as good that way. Funny how the shape really matters for the taste.
We spread out the blanket I had bought earlier in the day, testing it out. It looked nice on the bed, which is good. We opened up the mirrors she had bought at the same time, and picked our favorites. She decided to give one to each of us. My Mom had done the same with the coasters she had gotten in Agra on the day before. We were accumulating quite the pile of gifts for each other!
All too shortly we put our spoons and mirrors down, smothered on a new coat of sun block, and headed back out. I continued to hem and haw, but the sun was already much cooler than it had been at the observatory, so I decided to go for it. After all, how often do you get to go to a parade in Rajasthan?
The parade was for the Gangaur Festival, which just happened to overlap our trip to Jaipur. It is, according to Wikipedia:
Gangaur is the colourful and the one of the most important festivals of people of Rajasthan and is observed throughout the state with great fervour and devotion by womenfolk who worship Gauri, the consort of Lord Shiva during March-April. It is the celebration of spring, harvest and marital fidelity in Jaipur. Gana is a synonym for Lord Shiva and Gaur which stands for Gauri or Parvati who symbolizes Saubhagya (marital bliss). The unmarried women worship her for being blessed good husband, while married women do so for the welfare, health and long life of their husbands and happy married life.”
We drove back to City Palace, which is where the festival would start (it is, after all, where the royal family lives). We parked in a lot, and Watcher H took us to view the parade, while poor Driver R got stuck with the van. Watcher H was very excited, and said he had never been to the parade.
Our tour guide, who was no longer with us, had earlier told us where to walk to view the parade, but I am so glad Watcher H was with us, because we would have been completely lost trying to follow the tour guide’s directions. After swerving through multiple roads and doorways, past massive elephants and costumed people, he brought us out to the proper street.
“Do you want to watch from the street or up there?” he asked, pointing to an upper level open deck covered with a white awning, clearly indicating we should place ourselves at the deck. We looked around. We were the only white people on the street. We looked up. There were lots of white people up there. Well, this was uncomfortable! We finally decided it must be safer for us up on the other level, since absolutely no tourists were in the street, but it was an awkward decision- we (or at least I) felt like we were picking the ‘rich’ place to stand and it just seemed selective and weird. On the other hand, a large portion of the people left on the streets smelled awful, looked like they hadn’t bathed in days, nor washed their clothes in weeks. That is NOT typical of what I usually see in India, so it was unsettling for us. Maybe for Watcher H, too, since he seemed to want us to sit upstairs. So despite feeling odd about the decision, we happily went up the stairs to the shaded balcony.
We were seated in lawn chairs, third row from the front. Coincidentally, also the back row. Vendors were selling snacks and drinks, and women offering henna tattoos weaved through the rows looking for customers. We looked back down at the street below. All of a sudden, my mind drifted to Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl. There we were, sitting up, shaded from the sun, offered food and drinks, about to watch the parade. Meanwhile, the common people were stuck in the hot sun.
Eventually an announcement was made, and the parade began. Poor Mom, queen of photography, was hampered by the fact she was having henna applied to her left arm. (Henna is a thick brownish-red paste. When it dries, it crumbles off, and leaves an orangey-brown stain on the arm for a week or so. The end result, a temporary tattoo, is called mehndi). Mom continuously begged us to take more photos for her. When she was finished, she bullied Fez to get mehndi done, as well. While they were distracted with their drying arms, the rest of us watched the parade, occasionally snapping a photo or two to satisfy Mom.
We watched as men, with huge, S-shaped musical instruments walked down the street. My very favorite act was a man in a sparkly horse costume. He was waving, grinning like mad, and swayed the costume as if he really was a horse. You could tell he was having the time of his life. But eventually, he decided the drummers weren’t up to speed, because he took the costume off, and showed the drummers how they should really drum! So that was amusing.
Men in full body paint, much like the silver dancer, gold cowboy, or all-red lady on the streets of Chicago, marched past. I believe they were dressed like various Hindu Gods, but I’m not certain. Watcher H told us he was the ‘good Rama’. Regardless, he had horns, so as an American, I’m not used to horns being good in popular culture!
Women in all black danced and swirled around. They were completely disorganized, but their costumes looked great. Every so often they would stop and do an impromptu dance, but they were never choreographed or coordinated.
The same elephants that had given us a ride earlier in the day made an appearance at the parade. The elephants, if it is possible, had dour, remorseful looking faces. The elephants, with large holes torn in their ears (for earrings, made of cloth) would reach their trunk into the crowd, collect a tip, and hand the money up to the person riding on top! Elephant after elephant went by. I started to get bored- is that how strangers feel when they watch all the tractors at the Founder’s Day parade in Climax?
Eventually the elephants were gone, and gun-toting camels slowly passed. The gun barrels were huge, attached to their rider-less saddles, and happened to be pointing directly at us. The camels looked even more disgruntled than the elephants to be marching down the street.
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| Camels with Guns |
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Rajasthan parade without mention of the turbans! Multicolored turbans, blue turbans with gold tassels, long turbans that stretched down people’s backs. I had so much fun just turban watching.
Antique carriages, bull-drawn and fancy white horses soon passed. One carriage had a fake king atop. Shortly after the king passed, the parade (which was rather short) ended. Watcher H began to strategize- deciding to stay up for exactly two minutes before heading back down the stairs. Presumably two minutes was to let the crowd die down, but if that is the case, Indian crowds much be a whole heck of a lot faster at moving than American crowds, because I thought that two minutes probably wouldn’t be sufficient to move that many people!
After our two minutes, we hustled down the crowded stairwell, crossed the street, while watching two boys get into a fist fight over a coin, narrowly avoided stepping in horse droppings, and eventually found our way back to the van. Mom and Fez successfully protected their still-wet hennaed arms and we were all proud that they had managed to navigate the crowd unscathed.
I had thought about buying a bag of cotton candy while on our way to the van. But the cotton candy happened to be in the tiniest bags imaginable, so I figured two bites weren’t really worth fighting the hustle and bustle.
After the parade, our drivers asked us if there was any last souvenir shopping we wanted to do. Sister wanted a Kali statue, her favorite Hindu Goddess, so we stopped at a store to find one.
The store was rather annoying. They sat us down, and brought statues to us, rather than letting us look around. I reassured everyone that was normal (at least that is how you go sari shopping), so that was fine. She got a statue, I bought some coasters, and we wanted to leave. But the annoying part was that they wouldn’t let us leave! I had stayed behind to pay for my purchase, and when I tried to go out the door, they told me my family was upstairs. So of course, they hustled me through a bunch of stores, trying to whet my shopping appetite, and as I passed an open balcony, I spotted my family down below, clearly not upstairs. So I got mad, pushed them aside, and rushed back down.
We drove back to the hotel- it was only 8:00 pm or so, early by Indian standards. We went to the lobby and we had them scrounge up some oil and lemon juice, which I took upstairs and applied to Fez’s henna. It is supposed to make the color darker.
We went back to our rooms and decided to meet in the lobby for dinner. After Fez and I dropped our stuff off and freshened up, I grabbed the bottle of bug spray, opened our front door, and stood outside to spray my body. I went back, leaving the doors open and the bottle of spray on the table for Fez.
The next thing I hear is a blood-curdling scream from Fez. She is pointing at the door, and I just see a glimpse of the monkey’s backside as it scampered away from our room. Oops. Guess I shouldn’t have left the door open! Thank goodness Fez happened to be standing next to it when the monkeys invaded! I’m certain, if she hadn’t been there, they would have made it into the room. I grabbed her camera and did my best to take photos of the invaders, but they were quick and eluded me, save for a few pathetic shots of tails and one dark, hard to see monkey atop a pillar.
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| Monkey who tried to enter our room! |
After that excitement, we cautiously made sure our balcony door, and all of our windows were closed. We were the last people to dinner, again! We applied the lemon and oil mix to Mom’s arm and then decided what to order.
The weather and jet lag was wearing on everyone but me. I was fully recovered from my earlier heat exhaustion. I realized that in the monkey excitement I had forgotten my half-empty bottle of wine (from the previous night), and hustled back up to get it. Yes, I took my bottle from the dinner table last night. Alcohol is expensive in India! It was a mini-bottle, but still too much for one day. Everyone else declined to drink, feeling a bit off. Mom ordered a mint tea, but declared that it tasted like catnip. It made her miss her cat. I never miss that monster. It is the worst cat imaginable, scratching on doors all night, longing for attention.
During dinner we of course teased poor Fez for her utter fear of all animals. We kept trying to find exceptions (Mom was sure she’d love her current cat mentioned above), but finally, we got Fez to admit that our old pet dog ‘wasn’t too bad’. She wasn’t too bad because she was old and slept a lot and left Fez alone! Oh well.
After the meal, I ordered ‘apple pie’ from the dessert menu. It is my quest to find real apple pie in India. The first time I ordered it, in Bangalore, it came back as a custard-like thing that wasn’t at all remotely like apple pie. I left some pretty negative comments on their comment card. Tonight, before ordering, I had some questions to make sure it wasn’t repeated. I kept asking ‘are the apples sliced’, but we realized that the waiter, completely confused, thought that I meant ‘was the pie was sliced’. Well, yes, when it came to me, it was a slice. A slice of an apple cake, though, not a pie. Sigh. I was so upset. I decided to not eat it, in hopes that they’d exchange it for me, but that failed and I just missed dessert completely.
I finally came home to Mumbai and just bought a darn pie pan and have been making my own apple pies. I have an oven, but it doesn’t have numbers on the dials (this oven is OLD, it is a gas oven that still has to be lit each time you use it). The numbers were worn away years ago. Also, white flour here has a very different texture than that nice all-purpose white flour in the US. So it is a bit different, but at least I have my apple pie!
After dinner Fez and I thoroughly check our room to make sure no stray monkeys had snuck in. No monkeys. We were safe and went to sleep, ending our last day in Jaipur.
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