Jaipur to Bundi

Well, I've fallen behind a bit on this blogging thing so I'll just kinda skim over the past few days. We spent a day and half in Jaipur, it's known as the “Pink City”, although it's only pink on the main streets of the old town. It's noisy and congested and at times you have swarms of 7 or 8 people asking, sometimes demanding, that you look in their shop, take their rickshaw etc. At one time there was a guy with his eyes bulging yelling desperately that we look in his shop, he was not just telling us about how good his products were but instead he was pretty much begging us to look. I would not have been surprised if he got down on his knees and begged us. Another trick they always used was to say “hey remember me?” I usually don't respond. Occasionally I thought “Oh yeah, you're that jerk from yesterday who wouldn't leave me alone”. Anyways the sights in Jaipur were interesting. My favourite was Janter Manter, a collection of giant astrological devices built for the Maharaja to determine calenders and horoscopes. The guides were a bit expensive so I just “coincidentally” stood next to groups of people with guides whenever I was wondering how things worked. That way we saved money and I only had to listen to guides droning on about boring things when I wanted to. My favourite restaurant in Jaipur was the Thali House, the thalis (literally “plate” ) are spicy and tasty and they keep refilling your plate, whether you ask them or not. In fact it became a running joke with the waiters and they would keep coming back to me with more and I would usually have to decline, although they often gave it to me anyways, I was always stuffed after a meal at the Thali House.

After Jaipur we went to Pushkar, I won't write about Pushkar because I have got lots o write about now but my parents did so check their blog.

From Pushkar we headed to Bundi, a very beutiful and historic city with few tourists, The palace was really cool with all sorts of very old murals and the fort on the top of the hill was great. The fort was abandoned and really overgrown, you felt like Indiana Jones hiking through the vines to another ancient palace where you could climb up the crumbling staircase to the top for magnificient views of the old city and palace down below. It was also fun to watch the monkeys living inside. The old city was fun to wander through and had lots of narrow lanes, bramhin blue houses and cows. Our hotel was in an old Haveli, had running hot water in the morning and the garden restaurant had a table right outside our door, it was nice to order as soon as you wake up and go have a shower while they're cooking it. The owner of the restaurant was really nice and his two year old twin boys where fun. Some other things we saw in Bundi were a large lake outside of town the “84 Pllared Cenotaph” which only had 80 pillars. After 2 and a half day in Bundi we headed off to Agra.