A Guided Tour of Jaipur is the Only Way to Go
Our driver, Vijay, recommended that we hire a guide for the tour of Jaipur and it would only cost us 550 Rupees. So we took him up about his recommendation. He drove us to Hawal Mahal and that’s where we arranged for our guide. We said goodbye to Vijay and went to hand him a tip, but he wouldn’t take it.
At Hawal Mahal, known as the Wind palace is Jaipur’s most distinctive landmark. It was used by the royal women in the 17th century to watch the general public of the city behind walls with small windows. At that time, there were no veils and women weren’t allowed to go in public. So they had to watch life from inside a building. The reason it’s call the Wind Palace is when the palace was in use, there were fans attached to the windows which made the palace look like it was flying.
After Hawal Mahal our guide drove us through the Pink City located in the old part of Jaipur. Everything there is painted pink. Our guide told us that in 1876 the King of the time had the entire city painted pink to welcome the Prince of Wales, King Edward VII. In India, the color pink represents hospitality. Today, they still are not allowed to change the color.
Our next stop was the Observatory, Jantar Mantar. Here, our guide explained how each instrument was used in the olden days to calculate the time, the day and the position of the sun. There were other instruments that worked out the zodiac sign of all the people born in Jaipur. Jantar Mantar hosts the biggest sundial in the world. We found the whole observatory amazing, and we were really glad our guide explained everything for us.
Our final stop for the day was the City Palace. It has a mix of Rajasthan and Mughal architecture. Inside, there is a museum that showcases the costumes of the Kings and Queens of the era. All of them were original clothing that were well preserved. Also, within the City Palace, is the Armoury Museum. Daggers, guns of various sizes and gun powder flasks. In addition to that, the palace hosts the world’s largest single piece of silver. It’s a 345KG Jar, which held sacred water from the Jamuna river by the Jaipur King as he travelled to England.
Our guide was nice enough to take us to one of the five star Jaipur hotels where we were staying without extra charge. We asked him to have dinner with us, since we felt like he had become our friend, but he said his wife would kill him if he missed dinner again. We said farewell and headed up to our room and ordered room service. We did so much today, we had no energy left to go anywhere else for the night.
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