Jaipur and Agra.

It was finally time to visit Jaipur, the Golden City, and one of the most hyped destinations on our trip. Everytime I asked Tour Guide Manny where I could buy something, or do something, the answer was ‘Jaipur’ – there was a lot riding on this town…

We started with a walk through the busy streets with hundreds of tiny open shops, huge sacks out front overflowing with red chillies and spices. I bought masala tea and mouth fresheners (containing cardamon, tiny sugar lumps, aniseed and a delicious assortment of spices) that I eat like sweets, much to Tour Guide Manny’s disgust.

Jaipur was less touristsy and much bigger and busier than I expected – very different to Udaipur. Dinner was an unexpected highlight – Manny said we were going to ‘The Garage’. I thought this must be a trendy restaurant. When we arrived at an actual garage, with vintage cars and mechanics, we were perplexed. ‘I told you we were eating at the garage’ said an exasperated Manny McPhee. And it was really, really good! A basic tandoori menu of bbq veggies and accompanying veg curry, served with a speciality thin roti bread. With a beer of course.

The low point was a small girl practically chasing our tuk tuk asking for ‘chapati’ – unfortunately I didn’t see her approach and in the moonlight she looked quite creepy so naturally I screamed the place down 😬

The next day I got to experience one of the best moments of my life, in a hot air balloon ride over rural Jaipur. This was a generous leaving gift from my ex Google colleagues and I was delighted to have the opportunity to follow it up. Even though it meant leaving at 5am.

The balloon basket was smaller than I expected, though the actual balloon was huge – and so were the flames coming out of it! It gets surprisingly warm so close to those flames, so I didn’t really need the fleece and insulated hiking jacket I had borrowed from Gemma 🤦🏻‍♀️

We started off at fairly low height of 300m – flying over farmyards where the buildings, people and cows looked like lego pieces.

The best part was how the people came out of their homes to wave and shout Hello as we flew overhead! The Spanish pilot explained that he doesn’t really fly the balloon, the wind does – so every day is different.

He took us up over 1000m to cross the mountain range and get a stunning view of the sunrise. Indeed we watched the sun rise a few times over the mountains – I can’t imagine any sunrise in future can top that! I saw lots of sandmines in between the farms.

After an hour, having travelled 40km, it was time to land. We were taught both ‘soft landing’ where we just hold on to the safety handles, and ‘hard landing’ where we squat down totally inside the balloon. Suddenly we are approaching multiple power cables and flying towards the motorway and the pilot is shouting ‘prepare for HARD landing’ and the Middle Aged Americans the other side of me are preparing to die. But it was a false alarm, as the pilot then cheerfully explained he had enough gas to continue for another hour so we simply cruised along until the conditions were right for an easy landing in a field, where a solitary cow wandered over to investigate 😎

Because you always land in a different place, people aren’t necessarily expecting a balloon full of white people to land in their backyard. The cow was soon followed by hoards of curious villagers in traditional dress. The men hung back but the smiling women and children surrounded us. I couldn’t resist asking if I could take a photo and they all ran to squeeze in – my favourite was the grinning old lady on the right who sneaked in at the last minute.

Even the drive back to the hotel was fun as the driver spotted his father’s best friend, a milk seller with turban and impressive curvy moustache, riding a moped along side us. The driver then showed me the laminated list of driver rules, which stated that hair must be brushed, teeth cleaned and strictly no beards or moustache allowed. Otherwise he too would have a matching ‘tache. I said goodbye to the Middle Aged Americans from the balloon, who were Trump voting Texans, after listening to one of them boast about hacking his son in law’s emails and getting him fired and lots more that definitely isn’t legal.

As soon as I was dropped off at 9.30 am, the group was waiting for me and we were off to visit Jaipur’s beautiful fort. This fort topped all of the others in my opinion. Let the photoshoot commence!

We wandered through the King’s impressive wing, all marble and glass and mirrors and bright colours, before visiting the Queen’s slightly less spectacular quarters. She did not leave the fort, only looking through the holes in the windows.

Suddenly I heard ‘Mary Anne, it is you!’ – it was the Middle Aged Americans from the balloon, also visiting the fort. ‘Did you take the elephant ride up? It was awesome!’. – ‘No, I’m against animal cruelty’. Silence 😂

Jaipur is renouned for gemstones and there was an opportunity to get some custom made jewellery. But some of us didn’t want to pay the price and opted instead for the markets. What we got instead was aggressive salesmen and cheap anklets that have already turned my skin green 🙄 I was actually chased down the street by a tiny man over the price of a fridge magnet (which I later had to eat humble pie and go back and buy) so Gemma and I gave up and found a cute little coffee shop / gallery where we had a fascinating chat with a local guy. He started the conversation by telling us he’d been to Brighton and often heard the expression ‘Hello Sailor’ – and what did that mean? Umm…. we politely explained that whoever said that was probably gay. This sparked an interesting conversation on homosexuality in India, which is still taboo – you’ll frequently see men holding hands as purely a gesture of friendship.

We concluded Jaipur with the latest Bollywood blockbuster at the famous Raj Mandir cinema. There were no subtitles in the 2.5 hour movie ‘Manikarnika – The Queen of Jansi’ so I planned to leave half way through. But come the interval we were all thoroughly in love with this epic movie based on the real life warrior Queen and had mostly followed the plot. Tour Guide Manny had conveniently picked a seat far away from our lot, so we couldn’t pester him about what was going on. I’m now a Bollywood fan!

I planned to write about Agra and the Taj Mahal in this post as well, but will leave that for the next update…