Woah Amber (is the color of your energy)

After breakfast, we took a bus from Jaipur to Amber (also Amer), the former capital of the Rajputs before it was moved to present-day Jaipur. It is only a few minutes from the city but it feels like miles, even centuries away.

Winter left the trees and the surrounding hillsides naked so we saw the gold and pink walls in all their glory.

On the way up, elephants carry lazy tourists up to the gates.

It costs 500 rupees to go up on the poor things. They looked pretty in their face paint, but to be trained to go up and down these walls all day seemed unnatural and unkind.

Elephants were used to storm gates to ransack villages and pillage palace coffers.

Centuries later, they continue to enslave these majestic creatures... for 500 rupees.

It's not so high up, but inside the fort, there are palaces with labyrinthine passages where you could walk around for hours and end up lost.

And underneath the palace, the tunnels.

We went back to Jaipur for lunch. By then, I begun feeling a fever coming on, but we walked to Albert Hall anyway after I drank a paracetamol and crossed my fingers that it's just overexposure to the sun.

We were not planning on going to Albert Hall at all, because we read that the exhibits were prety dull. But since we had the composite ticket, it was practically free. We planned to save Nahargarh (Tiger Fort) for last because the view before sunset would be better.

The biggest surprise was this mummy from Egypt.

We had leg cramps walking around the museum and I wasn't feeling any better so we decided to go back to our hotel. We had trouble getting a rickshaw because they refuse to use the meter and asked for a hundred to three hundred for less than 3 kilometers. One of them is the guy in the black rickshaw below:

He didn't even care that the policeman had started butting in on the conversation. He didn't want to use his meter and he drove away. Eventually, we got someone who agreed to use his meter and I dug into the covers and slept until morning, running a 40° fever and coughing out blood.

I felt like this:

Blehh.

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.

HAPPY DAY 140!

It's been 140 days since we started this trip, and now we only have 4 days left in India... give or take a day.

By luck, we found a restaurant that serves baguettes, bagels, proper coffee and, (AAAAH!!!) blue cheese and walnut salad! Day 140 was a great excuse to eat ourselves back to health after days of being sick in Pushkar and Ranthambor.

It was an exhausting five months, but we've learned more about each other (and how to live with each other) than most couples might discover after years of being together. Maybe in 50 years we will get it right, but even if we don't, at least we'll be laughing through it all.

Flashbacks to our first days on the subcontinent occur more and more often now; and after a conversation with a greying British couple this afternoon at Hawa Mahal (Jaipur), we realized how street smart we've become. We're smarter about other things now, too.

Henri, we've come a long way, baby!