JAIPUR - FEBRUARY 6

We are leaving for Jaipur, the Pink City, this morning and there is a lot going on on the road. Still many, many colourful trucks. It is always so busy. We drive through villages and there is always plenty of animation there. Cows, camels.......... dogs, pigs, …. It is never boring.

We arrive in Jaipur in about 3 hours and we can find the hotel (Pearl Palace) we plan to stay at rather easily. But it is full and we have no reservation. There is another hotel (Kalyan Hotel)

http://www.hotelkalyan.com/index.htm

right across the street, they have a room for 4 people, so we take it. It is no bad choice anyway. The Pearl Palace had good reviews in various guidebooks, as it is very friendly and nicely decorated, but the other one is Ok.

We decide to visit the City Palace this afternoon and first have a snack on the street. The city deserves the name of Pink City, as many facades are painted in pink/orange. The City Palace is a beautiful place and we discover various beautifully decorated courtyards and halls..................

There are numerous beautiful doors,.......... windows, .....balconies,........ corridors, sculptures,....... ... ... carvings............. so many colorful details......................

.The guards wear a beautiful uniform and they kindly pose for a photo (it seems they expect a tip?).

By the way, the maharaja still lives within the Palace, but of course, his private palace has a guarded separate entrance.

Jessy takes us back to the hotel, on the way, we stop at the Raj Mandir cinema where we book tickets for the "Sunday" movie 6 pm show the next day, then we tell him to drop us off short before reaching it, as there is a kind of supermarket where we want to have a look. We buy various snacks, as we want to have our aperitif on the hotel terrace tonight. We then have a look at the clothes in the shop and we find a few nice things. Then, we decide to buy beer and wine and walk to the next shop. It is dark now and the streets are not much lit. This is when Christine steps into a large hole. There is a piece of the pavement missing and she did not look, so she just fell into the hole. We don’t know how deep it is and she clenches her fingers on the edge, in the hope not to fall any further…. We look at her in astonishment, can’t believe there is such a big hole right on the street and that she actually fell into it… Of course, we help her getting out of there and from that time, we just burst out with laughter, as this is too crazy to be true… Poor Christine hurt her leg and her fingers, but luckily, nothing is broken. Jocelyne being our devoted nurse, she will look after that… I think people who saw us on the street afterwards probably thought we had just been released from the psychiatric hospital. We could not stop laughing… In fact, we had such a fright, Christine could have disappeared in that hole, we had no idea how deep it was… Ant it was in the middle of the street, in an area where there are many pedestrians. So dangerous! But that’s India!

We really deserved our aperitif then…. We did not stay too long on the terrace though, as it was getting very cold. We had dinner on the terrace of the Pearl Palace Hotel, they had small fires at the side of each table and we enjoyed that.