Jaipur, Rajastan

Greetings. I’ve been in the capital of Rajastan, Jaipur, for three days now. The first day, my travelling companion until tomorrow, Beatrix, and I went to a bazaar in the old city. This area is called the Pink City because originally the walls and many of the buildings were of pink sandstone. What’s left of those buildings from the 16th-18th century are crumbling and pretty dingy. But that pink/rose color is definitely the paint of choice all over town, when it isn’t a kind of purple. India is too poor to keep things up as would be nice, but they try. One can understand why, with people literally starving all over the place.

Anyway, back to what I’m doing… Yesterday we hired a taxi to drive us around all day, mostly looking at the forts from the height of Mughal power, the early 18th century.

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There are three major forts near Jaipur. This one is Jaighar. Normally I have little interest in too many forts, but these are pretty nice. We managed to spend about 3 hours walking around them.

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Below is a typical old Hindu temple. This one in Amber town is from the 16th century.

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After looking at the forts we walked around in the nearby town. there wee several of these temples, and one Jain temple. Jains have a good heart. Look them up on the net. The taxi driver was a nuisance. He kept following us around, wanting us to go to shops and restaurants where he gets something for bringing people in. Both of us have been around way too long to have any of that, but he still tried. They are especially persistent in this country with pitching whatever they want. Between them and the beggars, I can see why people often go away mad. I look at it as a practice opportunity. How you feel about stuff is a window into what really makes you tick. Controlling yourself when you can’t control what you experience can be an effort.

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This is not an uncommon site here. Camels are used for many things, including plawing and hauling. there will be many more camel pictures as i’m going to the anual camel fair in Pushkar early next month. There will be trading of course, but also races, beauty pagents with the camels all trussed up and dressed in their finest, and other stuff I’ll tell you about when I see them. I hear they don’t eat them here. I wonder if that applies to this place during this time. Pushkar is the beginning of the wilder western part of Rajastan.

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This is a temple complex just east of Jaipur. There are areas for worship of several different deities, though Rama and Sita are the most popular, as far as I can see. This complex was built at the site of a hot spring. You can see in one of the pictures people ritually bathing at the temple ghat. The other pictue is staken from the second floor of the building you can see beyond the ghat picture. This was an unexpectedly nice place. I was surprised. Beatrix knew of it as the “monkey temple” because of the thousands of monkeys around. Little did either of us knbow it would be so nice. The monkeys are around and even fed in respect for Rama’s monkey god comrade, Hanuman. the original temple was a small cane. In there is the original rock painting of Hanuman from the 15th century.

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As Tennessee Earie ford used to say, “Bless their little pea pickin’ hearts”. A nit doesn’t stand a chance around these fellows.

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Like, I’m really not that busy.

 

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