Jaipur, Pushkar... and Delhi belly

After a hectic few days in Delhi and Agra, it was a relief to spend four days in Jaipur – also known as the Pink City, after the whole town was painted pink when the then Prince Charles visited in 1876.

Possibly the best thing about our stay in Jaipur was Rajputana Guest House, owned by the Singh family. With all the dishonesty from tuk tuk drivers, salesmen and touts, India can be a frustrating place but, as Luke joked, the guest house owner, KP Singh, is “the only honest man in India”. I’m sure this isn’t true but he’s the only honest one we’ve come across on the tourist trail.

Rajputana is the Singh family home which has been transformed into a pretty homestay/guest house with clean sheets, lots of lovely roof terraces overlooking Jaipur and beautiful meals which KP (who trained as a hotel chef) cooks himself. When we arrived we managed to demolish two big bowls of his tasty dhal in about ten minutes.

Home cooked food at Rajputana Guest House. Here with have mutter paneer and masala potatoes.

KP gave us advice on where to catch local buses (which cost 12 rupees, so 12p, each way, in comparison to 600 rupees, so £6, for a tuk tuk for the day). This kind of knowledge not only means we’re saving money but we’re also meeting “real people”. It causes much excitement when we get on the bus - the other day an old lady tried to give up her seat for me which was pretty embarrassing. 

We also had nice evenings at the guest house chewing the fat (while drinking rum) with KP - I think he and Luke became good buddies.

 

Jaipur has got so many beautiful sights it’s hard to sum them up – in the old town we enjoyed seeing the “honeycomb” Hawa Mahal but the most impressive attraction was Amber, a fort palace from 1592 which I think you’ll agree is pretty beautiful. We bought a combined ticket for 600rps (£6) each which got us into all of the main attractions – apart from the City Palace which was 200rps (£2) extra.

Amber fort/palace in Jaipur, India.

There was also a great selection of cute monkeys to see – including baby ones. There were a lot of (stupid) tourists there trying to get really close and even antagonise the monkeys but we stayed back and still got some great photos.

Mum and baby monkey.

Tiny monkey.

Little monkey licking ketchup off a plate he'd found in the bin.

While in Jaipur we went to see a Bollywood film at the famous Raj Mandir, India’s number one Hindi cinema. The only thing on was Bullet Raja, a shoot ‘em up with beefcake Saif Ali Khan as its star. I was amused to see that any female role which involved being a bit promiscuous was played by a western woman – a bit of racial stereotyping there I think!

After Jaipur we headed to the holy town of Pushkar which is where we are now. Unfortunately this coincided with us being struck down with the dreaded Delhi belly and we’ve spent most of our time here in bed (or on the throne, if you like). It’s a shame as Pushkar is different to anywhere we’ve been so far – much smaller and less congested – but we haven’t really been able to appreciate it.

On our brief walks into the town, we’ve seen that Pushkar is a place where cows rule – they’re everywhere and so are their cow pats! Other than that, it’s quite tourist friendly but the usual tricks are played – here it involves people pushing petals into your hands and then, when you’ve thrown it onto the lake, charging you money. Although we avoided this scam, we did get followed by a man for about 30 minutes – we slowed down, quickened our pace and changed direction a few times but he kept on our tail... it was strange a bit scary but eventually he disappeared, so I guess we’ll never know what he wanted.

Despite our illness, here are some pretty photos of Pushkar that we took at sunset...

Tomorrow it's on to Udaipur which is said to be India's most romantic city - let's just hope the Delhi belly subsides so we can enjoy it.

More things we've learnt:

1. In India, a moustache signifies a trustworthy gentleman.

2. Delhi belly is neither fun nor exciting... or as humorous as it sounds.

3. People are more likely to give up a bus seat to a young western girl than an old Indian woman.

4. Indian weddings are much better than British ones. Look how handsome the groom is and he's on a horse!

Wedding in Pushkar, India.

5. Women work on building sites - even while wearing pretty saris. See.

Women's lib in action on a building site in Puskar, India.