Apr 03 2009

Jaipur: La Ville En Rose

Some Rajasthan cities are known by their colour and today we're in Jaipur, "The Pink City", so called because the walls of the old city are painted with a pink wash. On a colour theme, in a few days time we'll be moving on to Jodhpur, "The Blue City".

Jane and I have been to Jaipur before and I we fondly remember the guide's statement about the city when we went for a stroll through the city at rush hour: "There's 2 million people that live in Jaipur and on this walk you'll probably bump into most of them". How true it seemed then, but now it seems a whole lot busier. 

 

Yesterday we travelled to Amber Fort which is probably my favourite fort from my previous time in India. It truly is a wonderful place and would be 100% better if those pesky monkeys weren't around.

 

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Apr 03 2009

The Downfall Of Ali Baba

"Ali Baba" took 19 photographs of the family on our elephant ride to the Amber Fort and told me to meet him in the car park after our visit.

I forgot. He didn't and he chased the car up the road once he spotted us. We stopped and he thrust the photos in my hand. "Only 100 rupees each sir". I laughed.

So that'd work out at about 30 quid. I don't think so.

He quickly dropped his price again and again, without me saying anything, with each price drop so did his enthusiasm for selling the photos.

He'd obviously failed to realise that if I didn't buy them no-one else would.

I said 200 rupees and he laughed, or was it cried?

He tried to get our driver Kamal into the argument and get him to say that 500 was a good price - it was - but it was a difficult position for Kamal to get into so he refused.

Minutes later I handed two crisp 100 rupee notes to Ali Baba and we drove away, Kamal laughing at how cheap we had bought them for, he'd have paid double!

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