Golden Triangle - Jaipur :: Day 2

The next morning our driver fixed a very busy schedule for us. Once again he picked another guide. This time it was a lady guide and she was the BEST. She took my email but never wrote, I'll try to get it and post it later.
She showed us around the Jantar Mantar where we could see old marble sun cloak and sophisticated star signs.

Then we were supposed to enter City Palace museum but preferred to skip and walk around the Pink City.



After a short walk around the main street and viewing some miserable cobras being charmed by their owners (no photos!) we headed to the Amber Fort.
On the way there we had to take out some money. We tried 2 ATMs without much success. the third one seemed fine (we tried taking out 100 rupees) and it was fine, but when I tried to take 8000 rupees we had power breakdown since it was electricity blackout (daily from 9-11 to supply power to the villages) for a while and the backup battery died. It was just shortly after the machine counted the money and was about to open up and deliver it to the happy owners :( we waited for 40 minutes till power was back just to make sure the money will no get into the wrong owners. After power was back the money didn't came out but later on I saw credit in my account for the money. I was shocked and HAPPY :)

It was time to move on and drive to the Amber Fort but couldn't resist and stopped to see the Palace on Water


Which we later heard was a Hilton :)

The Amber Fort was amazing. So beautiful. The only down side was the hundreds of visitors; both locals and tourists which made it less peaceful.





Although our guide was AWESOME, explained how ventilation worked that day, what the rooms were used for and highlighted really interesting facts, after half an hour we were tired, had enough and took the Jeep back down to where our driver was waiting for and headed back to Delhi where we had to catch our flight.

950 Km in great Toyota Innova - 10,000 rupees
Vanjara India Tours (kuggi6498@yahoo.co.in) 0091-9810233739

Golden Triangle = Triangle with Golden Corners :: Day 1

2 weeks ago I went on a magical tour together with Vik. The tour is also known as the Golden Triangle and I think a more proper name will be "Triangle with Golden Corners". The spots we visited were golden but the way there looked pretty much like a huge garage with thousand of slums along the "highway". Seemed like people lived everywhere (on pavements, together with their cows, buffaloes and chickens). It was also very surprising to see the men wondering around while every single women and kids were busy working, carrying stuff and cleaning.

We arrived to Delhi on Friday night and got picked up by our company's driver taking us to the company's guest house where the cook and house boy were there to show us around and fix a late dinner for us :)

Then, 5am we were picked by our driver Davinder which was a great driver but honked non-stop!. He suggested we go as early as possible to Agra straight to the Taj Mahal before Sarkozi got there for a visit. On the way we picked up a Guide which was horrible. It's been a while since I met someone with such a horrible presence he was only useful with getting us tickets while we queued.
The Taj is definitely worth a visit. Not for nothing it is one of worlds wonders. It is a huge white carved marble structure in a beautiful setting with fountains and 2 forts one on each side, overlooking to a valley with dried river.



From there we traveled to Agra Fort which was not less impressive. Actually walking around so early was adding to the magical ambiance around this huge red-ish fort. Without too many people around we found few awesome spots for photos and Vik played around with few naughty squirrels.



We then hopped on our Innova and traveled few hours to Jaipur. We arrived quite early but were fatigue and stayed in our not-so-good hotel which smelled horrible.