In the Pink

The city of Jaipur, Rajasthan state’s capital city, is known as the Pink City. That’s western media for you. Take something that isn’t even pink and make it world famous for something it isn’t, so that now even those who live here refer to it as the Pink City.

It all started in 1876, when Queen Victoria came to visit India, as then Empress of all the pink bits on the map. Hmm. again with the pink. In India, or Hindustan as it was then called, pink is the colour of hospitality, so Maharaja Ram Singh ordered all buildings in Jaipur to be painted, with a paint made of crushed terracotta pottery, to welcome the royal couple. It was Prince Albert, Victoria’s son and heir, who declared it the Pink City, and the press took hold of it.

I guess calling it the Terracotta Coloured City was too long a moniker.

One needs several days to thoroughly see this gorgeous place. Unfortunately we are here for 2 nights so feel a bit overwhelmed with everything. Having a driver and guide certainly gets you to all the highlights, deletes time spent figuring out how to get there, buying tickets and learning about what it is you are seeing. But  things start to merge in my brain when crammed into such a tight timeframe. I think in the future we would add at least a day, with no guide and no program, just to let it sink in.

The riches include the Amer Fort, which the British called the Amber Fort (another misnomer), probably because of the golden tone of the stone.

Then there is the so-called Tiger Fort, the Nahargarh Fort, perched high above the city. It was built about 300  years ago to defend the city. 

The royal pavilion known as Jal Mahal was used for duck hunting until the stench of the polluted lake forced the royal family to abandon their idyllic picnics. It is still polluted and still a fetid sewage stink, although there are some fish and birds making a living there now, so there’s hope.

The Palace of the Winds is a lovely name given to a multi-tiered, almost 2 dimensional structure that allowed the women of the royal palace behind to view the town without themselves being seen.

The City Palace is opulent. The royal family, still in residence, helps keep the place going by allowing tourists wander around, and brides and grooms rent out the former royal guest house (a marble building in the central courtyard originally used for visiting ambassadors)  for their wedding venue, for about $40,000 for the venue alone. It now houses a fabulous array of royal clothing and textiles, heavy with gold and silver embroidery covering the fabric – it must have weighed a ton. No wonder the queen went around in a sort of wheelchair.

Perhaps my favourite part of the entire day was visiting the deliciously named Jantar Mantar, right on the palace grounds. The Maharajah of Jaipur was a real astronomy buff and had this place built, along with a few others dotted about India. This one was the best in its construction, as all the instruments worked. It was possible to tell the time using the various sun dials – in one case to the next 20 seconds; in another place to the next 2 seconds! Oh, and did I say that this place is almost 300 years old? And all the instruments still work? Yeah, I was pretty impressed too.

this one marks time to the 20 seconds!

the stairs were for the men who built this thing, and calibrated it

the left sphere (side view) marks time during the summer 6 months
and the right hand side marks the winter months

detail of the sundial for the winter half of the year,
sunny because we are here on Feb. 1

another amazing instrument, made of marble