Yesterday we spent looking round some of the Jaipur sights. We started with the Janitor Mantar Mahal, an amazing collection of astronomical instruments installed by Jai Singh II in the early 18th century just outside the city palace. One of the most interesting exhibits for me was a huge sundial which could tell the time to an accuracy of 2 seconds (as long as the sun was out).
From there we did a tour of the City Palace which had a number of interesting exhibits including two huge silver urns each weighing 345 kg and capable of carrying around 4,000 litres of whatever – it was water from the Ganges when the then Maharajah took them to London for the coronation of Edward VII in 1902.
Following this we visited the Royal Gaitor or cenotaphs where former maharajahs and their relatives are buried. Unlike most places we have visited so far, this was a peaceful place with few visitors. There was a mixture of large mausoleums for the maharajahs and smaller ones for less important cousins.
Next an obligatory visit to a carpet weaving shop and saleman’s pitch thereafter and by then it was time for a light lunch with (unusually for lunchtime – SD please note) a cool Kingfisher beer.
We then returned to our hotel where Miranda was meeting up with a friend of our daughter to go shopping while Phil and I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing by the pool. Miranda came back with a lot of shopping!
Today, we drove from Jaipur to Agra making a side visit suggested by our driver to a deep well at Bharatpur which in many respects turned out to be more interesting than the scheduled en route visit to Fatehpur Sikri. This was interesting and of its type a fine example of a sandstone city constructed in the late 16th century, but only occupied as such for 16 years. But the carvings did not have the beauty and workmanship details that other buildings we have seen had.
A slow journey through the outskirts of Agra then followed by which time the wind got up with worsening visibility in blowing dust and we arrived at our hotel in a thunderstorm (but nothing more than a few drops of rain) from a large cunimb cloud with mamma overhead. After a while this cleared and the view of the Taj Mahal from our window became clearer.
We have started to look at the winds for our return flight which shows the jet stream continuing to pursue a much more southerly track than usual with stronger headwinds than we would normally expect. Phil and I had a planning session this evening rearranging our flight back to Hurghada to add an extra fuel stop at Riyadh to take account of this.
Tomorrow we meet our guide at 6 am for a sunrise tour of the Taj Mahal.