As promised, three autos had come to pick us up from the hotel to the railway station. I got along with SJ and MT in an auto. It was 5:30 a.m. and it was freaking cold. The auto in which I went was quite different than a normal auto. It had huge speakers which were playing loud Punjabi music and the driver was vibing to this music and demonstrating his dance moves while driving. Aur hum sooch rahe thee, bhai sahi se pohochna, auto se gira-vira maat dena humko, and I guess SJ and MT were thinking the same. He reached us safely, and honestly maja tho thoda hume bhi aya, isiliye tho yaad reh gaya. It was a bit warm at the railway station, a huge crowd of people waiting for their respective trains. It was time to say bye to Jodhpur. It’s a nice city, with not really a cityish lifestyle. Jaipur was awaiting us at the other end. We had a nice experience in Jodhpur, did Jaipur have the same for us?
Day 3, Jaipur
Compared to the journey from Goa to Rajasthan, this was a very short journey. It took us a few hours to reach Jaipur. Pink city as it is called, the city has huge gate-like structures which, to be honest, looked reddish to me.
By the time we reached the hotel and freshened up, it was almost noon. We decided to go out for lunch and would visit our next place after that. SJ wasn’t feeling well, so she decided to stay back at the hotel. The rest of us went out wandering in search of a place to eat. The weather seemed pretty depressing to me. It was cloudy, cold, with smog. As compared to Jodhpur, I wasn’t feeling very lively here.
I was feeling very lazy and I guess all of us were feeling lazy with the fatigue from travel. We took an auto to our next place… Hawa Mahal it was. I guess it gets its name from its front, which has sort of many windows. And if I remember correctly, the last time I visited this place (when I was very small), the taxi driver had told has it was for the Queens to look outside and nobody could look back at them.
The entrance of this place is a bit difficult to find, but we managed to find it after a bit of a struggle. Now, to enter this place, we had to pay for a ticket(I know, you know it). But there is a special discount for “good” students who carry their college identity cards. Luckily I was carrying my ID card, and most of us were carrying it. Unfortunately, SM was not carrying her’s, so we told the ticket guy 7 student tickets and 1 normal ticket. Also told him that one of us wasn’t carrying an ID card. The ticket guy was like unko idhar lekar aaiye, saw her and was like inka bhi student ticket lelo. I don’t know what spell she used.
So we entered this place, it was crowded and it was not as big as the other places we visited till now. It was a bit congested. There were two levels and on the ground floor, there was a water fountain in the middle.
There isn’t much to see here as well, except you can get a view of Jantar Mantar, which is very near to it.
There is a market street around this place, so it’s most crowded. Now, we wanted to go to our next location, Birla Mandir. Autos are a bit expensive there, and as I said it a marketplace so a busy street. Few people were after us asking, kidhar jana hai bhai?. There were many vehicles there that looked like a fusion of cycle rickshaw and auto. They are locally called tuk-tuk and are electric vehicles. One of us just accidentally happened to ask the price, and to our amusement, it was cheap. He said 20 Rs. per person. And it was very cheap compared to an auto. (And from now on, this was our vehicle of choice to move around).
The tuk-tuk guy called another friend of his since there were eight of us and we headed towards Birla temple. Interesting vehicles that these are, they have a very limited speed. It’s kind of funny that everyone just races you, and since four of us were in the other tuk-tuk, we tried shaking hands from one tuk-tuk to the other. It was a fun experience for us, and since it was our first time, we were all excited.
We reached Birla temple, its white and no, not with the paint. I guess it’s built with marbles. It’s a huge temple and looks elegant from the inside as well. Photography isn’t allowed inside. Apart from this, there is a garden around this temple.
By the time we were done looking around, it was almost dark. It gets dark pretty fast in Rajasthan. There were some street food stalls there. So we decided to try some street food. We bought bhel for us, aur street food me jo maja hai, wo restaurants me kaha?. It was really good. Maja aaa gaya!.
We wanted to visit Albert Hall but it was already dark, and guess it was closing time for them. So we couldn’t go inside. But, it was looking pretty from outside. It was decorated in lights and the darkness of the night was making it look more beautiful.
One of us got a call from SJ, that she was feeling better and wanted to join us. There was sort of a park there, so we waited until one of us went to the hotel and picked her up. Until then we spent some time chilling sitting on a bench in the park. We were looking for a place to eat, then HH found one.
After we were done eating, we went to a movie theatre. There is this place called Rajmandir, which has a very beautiful looking theatre.
I, MB and SJ decided to skip the movie as we were already tired. And as we’re heading back, MB spotted Sachin Pilot (then Deputy CM of Rajasthan) in his car.
Our first day in Jaipur came to an end here. Let us continue the journey in the next post.