Missed my alarm clock, which was set at 06:45 for a 07:00 breakfast and a 08:00 pick up. Was woken up by the hotel reception calling me at 08:18 and my driver asking if I had I forgotten the time, he is already here. It’s good that I had largely packed up the night before, so I was downstairs in 10 minutes flat, but skipped breakfast.

Visited a few things in Jaipur today:

• Hawa Mahal (wind palace) photo stop – ornate building facade with windows for women and royal ladies to look out into the city in olden days.
• Pink City / Jaipur Old Town – a simple drive around the old town to see the pink (more faded terracotta colour than pink) buildings on the main thoroughfares and bustling city life. It would have been lovely to run here yesterday, but it was 2-3km from my hotel, and a daunting prospect with temperatures at 31°C.
• Jal Mahal (water palace) photo stop – a palace built in the middle of man made lake (the lake was dug out the filled after the palace was built), but not open to the public now.
• Amber Fort / Amber Palace (or Amer Fort / Amer Palace). – Confusingly, the Amber Fort / Amber Palace is is not an actual fort. The actual fort, which overlooks the Amber Palace is known as Jaigarh Fort. It is a palace supposedly named after the Shiva temple which is situated behind it. The guide walked me through the different parts of the palace and explained the architectural elements and stories behind them, which was very interesting. From a geeky perspective, I particularly liked the design of the royal Turkish bath, and the design of the summer and winter palace and how the design facilitated cool and warm air in the different seasons. The original paintings on the walls and ceilings of the main gate were lovely, and I liked the special effect of the gold paintings on the ceilings which could only be seen from certain angles. But the most beautiful and breathtaking was the winter palace (or mirror palace) largely covered from floor to ceiling with small convex mirrors set in primarily floral designs. The guide said that the queen wanted to sleep under the stars, so the Maharaja commissioned his architects to design a palace which could create that feeling. And lights would be reflected and multiplied in the convex mirrors to create a starry effect. The guide also pointed out the Saffron garden, set in the middle of a small lake, which was so called, because the king wanted to grow saffron so that the queen could enjoy a saffron breeze (even though the efforts failed). It’s so romantic how the king designed and built elements of the palace because of his love for the queen, and out of the desire to make her happy. I hadn’t realised that the Indian kings (including Murghal kings like Shah Jahan) were so romantic!
• Block Printing demonstration / Textile shop – I was brought to a textile shop where they demonstrated block printing. I felt defeated before I started, and was mentally prepared to buy something small. Eventually I bought a Kashmiri silk cotton blend (not even sure if it is true) white tunic with some embroidery.
• Gem cutting and polishing demonstration / Jewelry Shop – I told the guy as soon as I entered the shop that I wasn’t going to buy anything, but that I would take a look at the pieces. But the sales person asked me what my birthstone was, and I told him, and he started showing me different pieces. I asked to look at earrings and saw a pair which has the same pear cut as the pendant AJ gave me. It clearly wasn’t in the budget, and it wasn’t the same beautiful deep red as my pendant… but the colour is probably close enough from afar and would make a good set with my pendant, Jaipur is a centre of gemstone processing, the guy said the stone was mined behind the Amber Fort – so I bought the pair of earrings. I have singularly failed to not shop at any shops during my entire tour guided trip!! My only win was my first visit to the silversmith / jeweler in Delhi, where I walked out without buying anything. That guy had commented that I wore no jewelry – it’s true I very rarely wear jewelry although I love beautiful designs -which is probably why he didn’t make a strong effort to sell me.
• Jantar Mantar (the Jaipur / Royal Observatory) – my guide brought me to the Royal Observatory and explained the use of the different instruments, which I found super interesting. He demonstrated how to use the sundial to determine the time up to an accuracy of 20 seconds, and I was amazed and delighted that it worked. Not contented with the accuracy of 20 seconds, the king built a larger sundial – the largest in the world – with an accuracy of up to 2 seconds!! It seems astounding that there were all these advanced technology back in the day.

Then it was a long drive back to Delhi from Jaipur, during most of which I felt rather car sick. We got into a small accident early on, when another car bumped into us. It was a slight shock as I didn’t have the seatbelt on. But we were alright. It rained quite a lot for a bit – which reminded me of the strong tropical rain showers in Malaysia – and the roads go slightly flooded. I guess I brought clouds, cooler weather, and rains to dry Rajasthan, as the week I was here the weather was cooler than the previous week. Lucky me!

Boarded flight from Delhi to Mumbai quite uneventfully, having arrived at the airport > 2 hours before the flight. Although I had to be quite aggressive on the security check as is usual in India – you need to be quite aggressive grab trays and shove your tray onto the conveyor belt – and my bag got picked for a security check (I think I’ve had 75% hit rate on call outs on this trip).

Then the transfer to Mumbai international airport was also reasonably uneventful, mostly because I had heaps of time before my flight. If I didn’t have a huge buffer, I might have been unpleasantly shocked and stressed by the long queue at immigration.

It’s now 0:31 local time, and I am already sitting at my gate for a 4:05 flight from BOM back to LHR. I hope I can sleep well on the plane. Otherwise it will be another ~24 hours or more of no sleep. I am really too old for this.