The Pink City

Clothed in pink stucco Jaipur is known as the pink city. Home to over 4 million people it is also a big city and the state capital of Rajasthan.
We travelled from Agra to Jaipur in a comfy airconditioned bus and stayed for 2 days with a lovely couple, Rangana and Divesh, at their homestay. Our fanciest accommodation yet. It was so spotless it made Brian nervous.
We hired a friendly taxi driver for the first day, Saddik, who showed us the sites of his city. Rajasthan is the land of kings and those kings had opulent palaces to live in,majestic forts to protect them and extravagant tombs to be buried in. So we visited palaces,tombs and forts. We also visited the Janta Manta a 17th century observatory which had some interesting astronomical creations. The Jaigarh fort dominates the skyline and is enormous. Bryan and Saddik got excited by the biggest cannon in the world which can shoot a cannonball 33km, but I quite liked the black eyed monkeys and the birds eye view. Saddik took us to his favourite vegetarian restaurant for lunch where we had pineapple korma and paneer korma, with naan and rice of course. The curries in India are a taste explosion. I can't get enough of them and keep discovering different types and tastes.
We finished the day on a rooftop restaurant festooned with flashing Christmas lights( more curries).Coming from the frequent power outages of Nepal and Varanasi it felt rather decadent. Throughout dinner constant fireworks surrounded us in a 360 degree arc. Apparently a common nighttime occurrence in the pink city.

Namaste Sandy