Greetings from the Pink City of Jaipur

Copyright 2008 - Jan Gorski
Close-up of the Palace of the Winds - Jaipur, India

I finally have a few minutes to post a bit about our journey and a semi-decent Internet connection. We are wrapping up a short stay in the Pink City of Jaipur, India. There are lots of pink buildings, guys in pink shirts, and pink gateways all around the city. The city appears to be, amazingly enough, more "developed" than Delhi. Real live asphalt streets, not as much honking of vehicles and people ALMOST stay in their lanes on the roads. The streets are still a big mob scene of bicycles, cars, motorcycles, tempos, trucks, cows, oxen carts, buses, and people walking - the chaos of India is something we are all having a hard time with. Lots of people, lots of loud noise and very polluted air & environment. The people are very pleasant and always want to please us. The slogan in India is "Everything is Possible."

We took an elephant ride up to Amber Fort yesterday to see a very opulent palace where moguls kept their twelve wives and many concubines. They even had secret passageways to visit each wife so the others didn't know they existed. We were on overload fairly quickly but managed a full day of sightseeing and power shopping. This city has many fine gems for sale, beautiful hand woven carpets made from silk, yak hair or cashmere and many fine handicrafts.

Later this morning we take another train ride to the city of Ajmer where we will drive a short distance to Pushkar. We are looking forward to the adventure of the Pushkar Camel Fair (but probably not the hoards of people that will be there).