Jaipur (2nd part)

One thing I have to say about our guide, he was awesome. He not only knew so much about the city and the fort, he also knew so many people. Not only that, he was incredibly gregarious and charismatic, and he was excellent at watching over us as a group and making sure we stayed together, got water, etc. It was kind of amusing. Maya at one time said something in Spanish, I don't remember to whom, but he then started speaking Spanish to her. They got along fabulously, but as a result, we found out that he is self taught in Spanish and he leads tour for the Spanish tourists. So all the vendors would come up to us and try to speak the few words of Spanish they knew to sell us their wares. Anyways, we really had fun with him during the day-- and his Spanish was better than Maya's.

After Lunch, we went to the Pink City. It was painted pink by one of the Raj's when King (or was it prince) George was coming to visit the city. Prior to that, much of it had been painted yellow/amber as well. It is still beautifully painted. The yellow part above is still the royal quarters.

We mostly visited the Palace. In the palace, there was a museum of textiles, which we could not photograph. It was fairly small, but it was fun to see . They had a few samples of various types of cloth, and then clothing from the royal family through the years. Then we wandered around inside the part of the palace which is open. We saw the famous peacock gate, and the other four entrances. I think the most interesting is the two silver pots which were used by one of the Rajputs when he went to England. He only drank holy water from the Ganges, so he had it taken with him. These guards were all over, and they encouraged photos. This one had a great smile.

After the Palace, we went to a "factory" where they do block printing and weaving. Actually, I think it was more of a showroom with a demonstration area. We did get to see some block printing, and Cindy even got to try it out. They use vegetable based dyes, and the interesting thing is that the dyes go on in one set of colors, but then with the sun over several days, change to other colors, not just fading. They demonstrated this to us by chemically forcing the colors to change more quickly than normal. Conner and Smitty also got stamped. They got a small elephant with the word India underneath.

We ended the day with palm reading at the hotel. It was kind of fun. Supposedly I'll live to be at least 101 and won't have any major accidents in my life.