Jaipur. Pink City. The Maharaja Jai Singh in 1878 ordered all the buildings facing the main road to be painted pink in order to welcome the Prince of Wales.
We headed out of our Mess around 1030 hrs to our first stop – Hawa Mahal. This place is known as such due to the number of windows in this palace – there are 394 windows in this one palace! This entire palace was built only for the Queens and their attendees. During the Purdah system, the women weren’t allowed outside in public. This Mahal was built so that the queens could see processions and any festivals that were held through the many windows. There is a passageway that leads from the City Palace to Hawa Mahal only so that the queens could go from one place to another without being seen!
The City Palace is still the residence of the current Maharaja who is very very old. Half the palace is his place of stay and the other half has been turned into a museum. When the Maharaja is staying in the palace or when he is in Jaipur, there are 2 flags that are hoisted up otherwise there is just one.
The City Palace is huge, and there are multiple museums inside. There is also a City Palace coffee shop where we headed straight! :P This place will take at least 3 hours of your time if you want to go through it properly.
While we were there, the place looked even more colourful and nice because there was the shooting going on for a Salman Khan movie!! :D Sadly, we didn’t see Salman Khan :P But the enormity of ONE SCENE of a movie was quite surprising!! There’s so much that goes into it!!
After the City Palace, we skipped Jantar Mantar, and went to Nahargarh Fort. The story of this fort was that Maharaja Madho Singh had 9 wives and he built a fort with 9 identical houses for each of his wives!! Quite picturesque and would have been a lot of fun to plat hide and seek in!!
We had to give up Danish’s license because Kudu hadn’t got his seat belt on and we refused to pay the bribe of Rs. 200. We had to pick up his license from the cop station the next day and pay a fine of Rs 300!
After the fort, we headed to Choki Dhani and had a blast! This a must visit for anyone going to Jaipur!!
13 years ago
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