A week in the desert
Day 1: Jaipur
Lily
had just woken up as the bus came to a sudden halt, a herd of cows suddenly
passed through the road, swaying their sad faces with complete indifference to
all the horns. These sights seemed so strange yet fascinating to the little
girl. A blue hoarding could be seen from afar, “Welcome to Jaipur. Mommy, we’re
here!” Her mom looked at her and smiled. All the pink houses reminded her of the
colour of her dollhouse. They reached the hotel around 10 am and quickly freshened up. The tourists who
had travelled with them on the bus all gathered in the lobby. They were ready to
experience the sights of this old city. The first stop was Hawa Mahal. The most
interesting thing to Lily about that was that it was shaped like a honeycomb of
a beehive & the guide telling everyone that there were 953 small windows,
intricately carved so that royal ladies could look at the commoners without
being seen.
Next
on their itinerary was Amer Fort, which was on the outskirts of the city,
placed on small hillock and overlooking a lake. She got excited because for the
first time in her life, she got to ride an elephant up the hill. When they
reached, she even got to pat the elephant’s trunk when they reached the
entrance. The guide told the group that the insides were built from red
sandstone & marble comprising
of the Diwan-e-Aam or the "Hall of Public Audience", the Diwan-e-Khas
or the "Hall of Private Audience". Lily’s favourite part was the
Sheesh Mahal(mirror palace) where the guide lit up a matchstick in the centre
of the room and the reflection seemed like it was full of lamps. She wanted to
stay in the Sukh Niwas a bit longer, where a tiny waterfall assisted by the
winds that are funned through it create an artificially cool climate; a
medieval air conditioner if you will. They had lunch at the restaurant ‘1911’
inside the palace complex. Lily had Daal makhni & Naan & to her mother’s surprise, Lily liked the taste and
polished off the plate faster than her and even took a second helping.
After an elephant ride back down, the group proceeded back into the city and soon reached Jantar Mantar. The guide told them, was the largest astronomical observatory
from the Mughal period, it consisted of fourteen major geometrically built
devices and structures for determining things from the local time to tracking
the stars location. Lily climbed started climbing on one of the structures but
her mom sternly told her to come back which she later found out was called ‘Laghu Samrat Yantra’, that was used for
time calculation. Lily was enthralled
by The ‘Hindu
chhatri’, a small copula, where the top is used as a platform for
announcing eclipses and the arrival of monsoons, she didn’t quite understand
how it worked but couldn’t really believe how they engineered something like
this in the early 18th century and neither could her mother.
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