Jaipur

We arrived from Mumbai on Friday night at about 10.30pm (plane was late), and for the Melbourne peoples benefit, it was only about 14-15 degrees. I’m such a tourist as I was only wearing a t-shirt, shorts and sandals and it was freezing. The north has much cooler temps than in Southern India. Once we had checked in Tahlia and I went for our usual hour or so walk around the neighborhood (all of the locals were wearing coats and beanies).

Jaipur (pop. 2.6m) is the gateway to the state of Rajasthan and spreads both west and to the north it borders on Pakistan.

I was here in the mid-nineties but what a change. There are still and cows wandering through the streets, camels pulling carts, elephants being led in the streets, monkeys jumping around temple walls, rickshaw riders competing with auto-rickshaws and all of the other traffic, beggars, women in colorful saris and men in turbans. All above still remains but there have been massive upgrades to the supporting infrastructure. This is all very frustrating because whilst there have been obvious improvements and developments it all contrasts with what you see in the way the poor and not so fortunate live. As an example, when we went for our walk last night down the Main drag, MI Rd, we had to stay to the road side because any footpath had homeless people sleeping side by side on it.

Today we wandered around the bazaars and the lanes of the old city for a few hours. Tahlia was wearing a KISS t-shirt, skinny jeans and carrying a guitar (yes we bought another guitar). Everyone wanted to say high or shake hands with TC; too cool.

And, yes Sophie we bought you another present.

Late this afternoon we went to the Monkey Temple to watch the sunset. After the sunset we sat back watching the colours of the hills and building change until it was finally dark whilst we had a coffee with our driver.