India - Jaipur Holiday, Travel and Touring Guides.

Sightseeing Guides and Photos for India's Pink City of Jaipur - touring the Forts and other interesting locations in and around Jaipur.

India's City of Jaipur - also known as The Pink City - has a population of over 5 million residents yet because of it's modular design and often broad streets the place does not feel that crowded. Jaipur is known as the Pink City because many of the avenues and buildings are still coloured pink from the 1853 visit of the Prince of Wales when the whole city was painted pink as a greeting to him. Jaipur is the capital of the Indian State of Rajasthan, has good road, rail and air connections and is an extremely popular destination for overseas tourists because it is part of the Golden Triangle (the other two parts of the triangle are Delhi and Agra) and has major places of interest such as Amber Fort, Jaigarh Fort, Nahargarh Fort, City Palace, the Jal Mahal, quite a few temples including the Monkey Temple plus several very nice gardens to visit.

Getting to Jaipur. The City's airport is called Sanganer Airport and is around 11 kms from Jaipur City Centre - two of India's domestic airlines currently run schedules - Indian Airways and Jet Airways. Indian Railway's Jaipur station is very close to the city and has connections to all over India including express and super-fast for Mumbai, Abu Road, Bikaner, Jaisalmer, New Delhi, Agra, Chennai, Varanasi, Udaipur, Jodhpur and Chittaurgarh.

Please note that where opening times are quoted and also any quoted entry fees these are as of February/March 2009 and are offered for guidance - and are of course liable to change.

Jaipur - The Pink City.

Hawa Mahal - Palace of the Wind. The Palace of the Winds at Jaipur - it's correct name is the Hawa Mahal - is a really interesting and very pink building right in the heart of the City. Built of red and pink sandstone by Maharajah Sawai Pratap Singh in 1799 the Hawa Mahal is part of the City Palace - and was designed to enable the ladies of the Royal Household to be able to watch the various activities and processions etc. in the streets below with out being seen themselves. This was achieved by partly screening the small windows with lime and plaster lattice work to create peep-holes. Entry fee for the Palace of Winds is 100 Rupees for non-Indians and it's open daily.

City Palace Jaipur - Sawai Man Singh Museum. Open daily the entry fee for the public area of the Palace is an expensive 300 Rupees for non-Indians - you should keep your ticket because it will also allow you entry into Jaigarh Fort if used within 7 days. Part of the Palace is still occupied and therefore not available to the general public. There are museums to visit including an armoury with many beautifully decorated swords, knives and guns, another has carpets and textiles and yet another has a good display of old carriages. The Diwan-i-Am has highly decorated walls and ceilings and was the former Ceremonial Hall - you will find miniature paintings, manuscripts and books and carpets as well as a magnificent crafted silver throne. In the Diwan-i-Khas there are two huge silver urns - at over 1.5 metres in height and having a capacity of 8182 litres these are the largest crafted silver objects in the world. The urns were filled with water from the Ganga and transported to London in 1901 when Madho Singh II visited the City for King Edward the VII's Coronation and did not want to risk drinking English water.

 

Jaipur's Gardens - Kanak Vrin Davan.

 

Nahargarh Fort (Tiger Fort). Built by Sawait Jai Singh in 1734 Nahargarh Fort sits on a high hill overlooking Jaipur - although seemingly very close to the city it is not that near to actually get too unless you want to take a walk up the hillside. By road it is a 15km drive from the city - you can decide to take a tuk-tuk / auto-rickshaw to save money as the road is surfaced all the way but we are aware that sometimes tuk-tuks are stopped by gangs of youths who demand money to let you past - this actually occurred with a lady in a tuk-tuk whilst we were at the Fort. Therefore if you don't want to walk up and are on your own it's probably better to include visiting the Fort as part of a "car and driver" sightseeing day. The other way to get to the Fort is as mentioned to take a 20 or so minute walk up the hill-side - there is a nice zig-zag path available which is quite steep and gives you good views of Jaipur. Any auto-rickshaw driver will know where the path starts from however even here there is a possible safety problem - from where you are dropped off on the edge of Jaipur City you have to walk the last part along a not too pleasant road. You may well encounter groups of youths on the way up the path who are at times a little intimidating - again really this is probably not best walked on your own. There is no charge to enter the Fort and because of this there are also gangs of youths hanging around up in the Fort's grounds. There is an attempt being made to "do-up" the Nahargarh Fort - the Madhavendra Bhavan is certainly very interesting to wander around and work is still going on so perhaps the Jaipur authorities will soon place some security up there. Still on the same topic - it really would be unwise to be up at Nahargarh Fort from early evening onwards - and not to have to walk back down the path into Jaipur once light starts to go.

Madhavendra Bhavan (inside Nahargarh Fort). There is an entry fee to go into this Bhavan which is currently 15 Rupees. It is a maze of rooms / apartments with interconnecting corridors which are all brightly decorated in various colour themes of blue or orange - the corridors were used by Madho Singh II to visit his various concubines without attracting too much attention.

 

Royal Gaitor (Marble Mausoleums). Entry is free but if you want to use your camera there is a 10 Rupee fee - the mausoleums are located in the northern edge of Jaipur and contain the cenotaphs of the rulers of the city (including the founder of Jaipur - Jai Singh II) to the present day.

 

Jaipur's Outskirts. The Jai Mahal was built in the mid 18th century by Madho Singh I and sits on the bed of the 310 acre Man Sagar Lake - the Lake itself is heavily polluted however the Jai Mahal does look very picturesque.

 

Jaipur's Gardens - Sisodia Rani ka Bagh. There is a small entry fee to these terraced gardens which were built for Sawai Jai Singh II's second wife - they feature various wall-terraced flower beds and quite a few water features including fountains which are mostly dry unfortunately but it's a nice spot to stop for a while.

 

Visiting Jaipur's Galta-Kund - The Monkey Temple. Located within a narrow gorge and around 10km east of Jaipur (a tuk-tuk will take you there and wait for around 250 Rupees) Galta is nick-named Monkey Temple because of it's huge population of monkeys - and the area is free of charge to visit - it's correct name is Galta and comprises of some very run down temples and water tanks. There are quite a few odd looking inhabitants (we do not mean the monkeys) hanging around and living in the buildings and perhaps this would not be a good place to visit too much into the evening or at night. If you go to the temple remember to pick up a nice 4 or 5 kgs of fruit from a stall beforehand - although monkeys are meant to like bananas you will find the Galta's monkeys - given a choice - will prefer eating the oranges. Note that the Sisodia Rani ka Bagh (see above) are located on the way to the temple so it's worth perhaps considering both visits on the one trip.

 

Amber Town.

Amber Fort. Located along the Jaipur to Delhi road and around 11 kilometres outside of Jaipur City the fort has an entry fee of 100 Rupees for non-Indians and is open daily - the ticket office is located by Chand Pol. You can walk up via a cobbled footpath and go into the fort through Suraj Pol gate - which means you get lovely views of everywhere on the way. It is also possible to hitch a ride on an elephant and finally you can drive or be driven up to Chand Pol where there is very limited parking.

 

Amber - Jaigarh Fort. Jaigarh Fort was built by Maharaja Jai Singh II in 1726 and is one of a handful of Indian medieval Fortresses which is still pretty well intact. Jaigarh is perhaps best known for it's Jai Ban cannon - built by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh the cannon has a 20 foot long barrel and needed at least 100 kg of gun powder for a single 50kg cannon ball single shot. The cannon - which was said to be the largest of it's type in Asia at the time - is sat on a huge gun carriage the wheels of which are 9 feet in diameter and has not been fired in anger - just test-fired. The views from the bastions when looking down into the Fort are excellent - beautiful gardens surrounded by palace and other buildings.

 

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