Tickled Pink in the Pink City

Jaipur is called "The Pink CIty" because of the color of the bricks used in the building of the city. It reminded us of another Pink City, Toulouse. I guess it was only fitting that Jaipur gave us a taste of France after a loooong time. We found French press coffee, baguettes and blue cheese at Anokhi, a restaurant and boutique. HAPPINESS!!!

On our historic walk, we passed through the bazaars specializing in bangles, shawls and marble...

to get to Iswari Minar Swarga Sal, the highest minaret in Jaipur.

From here you could see the tiger fort and the entire city.

The entrance is only 10 rupees and since it's not a major tourist spot, we were the only people there.

The old man guarding the tower gave us advice about our itinerary and pulled us over to the other side of the monument to take our pictures.

Then we went to through the public's entrance to the City Palace. There is another gate reserved for royalty.

The royal entrance.

One of the main attractions of Jaipur is the City Palace, but two locals had already warned us that the inside is just a glorified shopping mall with nothing historic inside. A quick read about the site made us decide it is not worth the 300 Rs entrance fee, so we decided to skip it.

Instead we went to Jantar Mantar. A composite ticket that costs 300 included admission to five sites: Jantar Mantar, Nahargarh (Tiger Fort), Hawa Mahal, Amber Fort and Albert Hall Museum. I wasn't so interested by the first site at first, but Henri, the amateur astrology nut, convinced me to get the composite ticket and see the king's observatory. I must say, it was interesting.

This is the wall where they measured the constellations.

Here is the biggest sun dial in the world, accurate to about 2 seconds.

The garden is full of large sculptures like these, all made to measure the movement of heavenly bodies.

After that we went to Hawa Mahal, the entrance hidden behind a bunch of pashmina stalls.

The Hawa Mahal is Jaipur's most recognizable monument.

Erected so that the ladies of the court, who are not allowed outside, could watch the street parades from the small holes and windows of the 5-storey building.

Those women were tiny!

From here, they also had an unbeatable view of the kingdom.

However beautiful though, it was still a prison.

The sun was going down and we had a comfy hotel to go back to so we decided to call it a day. We had yet to recover from the rough trip to and from Ranthambore, and my ass was still sore.