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From Agra we hired a driver to take us several hours west to Jaipur (4 million people) in the state of Rajasthan. It was quite an interesting (and bumpy!) ride through flat dry landscape and a string of colorful villages. We passed lots of refreshment stands and women in colorful saris. Rajasthan is known for especially brightly colored fabrics. The sad part was to see captured bears along the side of the road with their owners trying to get money from tourists for posing with the animals (not even native to the area).

Jaipur is called the pink city for its bright pink walls (see first photo), but these are really just in the old city center, and most of the city looks light blue from above (see second photo). The one thing that you can’t really see in the photo is all the boys flying kites from the flat rooftops.

We first visited the old center (photos 3-7). The City Palace included beautifully decorated gates between courtyards (see peacock relief) and Jantar Mantar, an observatory with building-sized astrological measurement instruments (see photo). There are 5 such astrological sites around India, but this one is the best preserved.

During our 3 days in Jaipur we also took a trip outside the city to visit Amber Fort overlooking a lake and a nearby Nahargarh Fort where we watched a gorgeous sunset on the roof. On a separate side trip we also drove out to the Galta Temple, “Monkey temple”, so named because of all the wild monkeys camped out outside of it. The Galta Temple complex, built into a rocky mountainside, must have once been gorgeous, but it now needs a good clean-up and paint job. It is still pretty spectacular though!

Aside from sightseeing…. We did a bit of shopping. The restaurant in our little hotel had awesome food, and it was here that we got used to having dahl for breakfast (a chickpea soup/sauce).