Valentine's Day in Jaipur

For Valentine’s Day
Since arriving in Jaipor we have worked very hard at finding a bad meal and have failed miserably. The hotel we are at has one of the best tandoori ovens we have found and the meals are the best. Just to show that we don’t just spend our time eating we took a couple of day trips to see the local sights and have spent a lot of time wandering the bazaars and alleys of the old Pink City. One of the day trips was a follow-up to the Amber Fort, this time we bought a ticket and toured the Royal Palace. We had the good luck of hitting there on a day they were filming a movie so we got to watch all the set positioning and crowd work with the extras for the movie – we were hoping to be picked for a role but they missed us. After we returned from the Fort we did the old city walk - working our way through tiny shops of spices, cloths, saris, tools, foods and a hundred sewing machine shops. We also took a trip to the (in)famous Galta or “Monkey” Palace, a very old and majestic temple built deep within a rocky ravine complete with a fresh water spring. The temple is owned by the monkeys, hundreds of them - up into the hills, in the temple, in your pockets and literally on Laurie’s back. There are holy bathing pools filled by the spring built into the temple and the bathing is both a serious holy and monkey affair.
As a historical note: Laurie has now gone totally “local”, she wears a sawar kameez and negotiates 30 minutes with the auto rickshaw drivers over a 60 cent differences in price (they only charge $2 to go across town) – I have lost her to India!!
Today,the 14th, we took another day trip to Samode to see another palace that has been turned into a heritage hotel. They have so many old palaces that the only way to ensure they are maintained is to make them produce a profit and the hotel scheme works very well. The palace cum hotel is beautiful and looks as if new and it is only 400 years old (reminds me today is my sister’s Birthday). We begged our hotel and they found us a room for our last night so tomorrow we board the train for Pushkar. Once again Laurie has worked her travel miracles and all the travel arrangements are going exceptionally well (her EXCEL sheets are the envy of all the backpackers (real travelers) we meet).
Steve