Jaipur - the city of pretty

Chelsea, a fellow student from USAC, arrived in Jaipur late last night. My flight was delayed an hour and the journey was absolutely hilarious. My pilot sounded like a cracked out Jack Nicolson.

When I arrived in Jaipur my first though was "Shit, it really is ungodly hot here." but after a minute I realized that nothing quite compares to the humidity of Mumbai, so I counted my blessings.

We arrived at the hotel after only a couple minutes and discovered that it does indeed live up to the fabulous reviews. It really is a palace. The place is stunning, the owner is kind and helpful, and the food and fruit are to die for. Our room looks like it should be in a palace...but the architecture here is so stunning thats not suprising.

This morning, after a lovely shower and a good sleep, we decided to take a tour of Jaipur. The owner said "Do not pay more than 250 ruppees for a city tour" so we tried not to and struck a deal after only a short time. Though our drive brought us to some key destinations, the old city (Pink city), city palace, and eventually Amber Fort, I was definitely not getting a good vibe from him. I thought this on 2 occasions 1.) when he brought us to a textile factory, he's clearly commissioned 2.) when he started telling obscure dirty jokes. We had to get out of this.

Luckily, or not so luckily, we ran in to some 20 something Indian guys who unlike the 400 other people at Amber Palace that wanted to take pictures with us, actually asked us to take a picture of them. They seemed pretty nice so we started talking to them, eventually they invited us to a wedding. Me being a little to accepting of people gladly agreed. They said they'd give us a ride back, and asked how we go there. After we told them a driver was asking for 250 they laughed "Everyone loves ripping off foreigners." Awesome.

The boys talked down the drive to 200, when he was actually asking us for 500! Earlier, he said he'd give the tour for 250 - failing to mention that actually meant 250 each. Then we drove away and stopped at a place to eat.

In my limited understanding of Hindi I started to deduce that maybe going to this wedding wasn't the best idea. Don't get me wrong, I would absolutely love to go to an Indian wedding, but these guys were being a little to off putting for my preference, definitely the whole whispering in Hindi thing they had going on. So we thanked them for the ride an ditched them. Happy that we saved atleast 300 + ruppees for the day!

Oh Amber Fort and City Palace?! Absolutely gorgeous. These structures were strikingly beautiful, and simply took your breath away. This experience is best described through pictures.