Jaipur

(Written saturday night).

Well we just finished our day in Jaipur. I'm glad we decided to add it in at the last minute. It was definitely better than two more days in khujaraho. The day train was fun thanks to a car full of foreigners trading stories. They all left us in Agra as we continued on.

We hired a rickshaw driver for the day who took us to a jewelry shop and a textile factory in addition to the sights we actually wanted to see. Now I'm the proud owner of an aquamarine ring and two hand block printed scarves. They're all very pretty though.

We started off at the city's biggest minaret and headed to the city palace (we prefer udaipur's) and a pretty tomb. The architecture here is so intricate and beautiful. The tops of windows are all scalloped and often have lace-like cutouts and carvings. Most of the buildings we saw were made of sandstone or marble. It's amazing that more of the detailed designs haven't been washed away over time in monsoons.

Jaipur is called the pink city because a lot of the natural stone is pink, and the king of some time period built a pink palace because it was his wife's favorite color? Our understanding of the actual history is an interesting mix of rickshaw driver fun facts and a cursory look at the lonely planet. A lot of the road dividers have pink-painted patterns on them.

We had some delicious potato cake street food in the rickshaw parking lot for lunch and climbed up to the top of a fort overlooking the city. JD is sleeping, but he knows the names of the places we saw. It all blends together for me. Then we wound higher up into the hills to see the tiger palace. The rickshaw driver let me drive the rickshaw, with his hand on mine, while he told me he would want to marry me if I hadn't come with JD. Little creepy, but there aren't a whole lot of foreigners around and even fewer blondes so I've gotten used to a few random come ons. That palace was interesting because it was inhabited by a troupe (right?) of monkeys that let JD know when he was coming too close. There was also a very stinky room full of bats.

In the evening we haggled for beaded shoes. $7 in the first shop and $3 at the neighboring shop. One pair is blue, one red. Loooove them both.

Then we headed out in search of dinner and had an omelet on bread cooked in a wok for 50 cents (all prices for both of us), a couple of crispy pancakes with soup and mango pickle for 75 cents and some street tandoori chicken for $3.75 or so. There were lots of flies and lots of people in that restaurant. So far so good though.

At the end of the night we wandered into the movie theater and saw the newest Bollywood movie. We've been hearing the theme song throughout the country, so it was fun to match it to the movie. I slept through maybe 1/3 of it but JD loved it. It was about a woman in a mob family who is engaged to this guy who keeps accidentally getting into jail for things like throwing a match over his shoulder that ends up landing in paint thinner and blowing up the jail. Every time she comes to pick him up when his time is up, he does something else and gets back in. Anyway this fake? police officer, the hero, falls in love with her and marries her. My fav part is how the major characters all have their own personal theme song so when they walk into a room, their song plays. For $3, it was a good way to spend 2 hours. JD would probably argue it's one of the best things we've done.

We're on a chair car train now to the Taj Mahal in Agra. We're passing through farming communities with big fields of yellow flowers that look like wild mustard, groups of tiny huts and big haystacks. I always wonder whose job it is to reshape cow patties into discs and lay them out to dry.

JD is sleeping and I'm reading a book we bought in the chennai airport about the history of Indian geography. JD and I usually read together but I've been sleeping a lot on trains so he's far ahead. It's very interesting though, especially the parts about places we've been.

Feels surreal right now, but we're excited to get to the taj. It doesn't feel like we should already be at our second to last day here. Tonight faj got us a room at the Marriott near Delhi and I'm thrilled for feather pillows and a hot bath. Spending the day in Delhi tomorrow before our 2am flight tomorrow night.