Jaipur

Yesterday was a travel day from Jodhpur to Jaipur, starting on the back roads but eventually getting onto the main central Highway 8, a dangerous place to be. It is 3 lanes and highway code says slow traffic stays left but the Indians do exactly the opposite. They have a history of weaving so perhaps that is carried into the driving habits.

You are as likely to see a camel cart as you are a truck in any of the lanes, often there will be vehicles coming the wrong way on the hard shoulder. We saw one car stopped in the fast lane, the man was unloading luggage for 3 women to climb the barrier and cross the highway on the other side! Often there are patches of tarmac missing with no warning signs or multiple speed bumps approaching a junction. We saw 3 cars completely smashed and a tanker truck lying on it's side in the ditch. Driving at night is not recommended.

We made it to the Rambagh Palace Hotel in one piece, ready for cocktails.
Today's excursion focused on the City Palace, an unusual combination of palace complex and observatory. Maharaja Jai Singh was a world renowned astrologer and astronomer and he built a complex of sundials including the largest in the world, accurate to 2 seconds. Here you can see it at 11 o'clock in the morning, the shadow precise.

In another section of the complex is a separate structure called the Palace of Winds, built to satisfy the ladies of the time when they were not allowed to appear in public. From this building they could get away from the 'drudgery' of palace life and look out over the streets at daily life and at the same time be protected from view by the screens which are so prominent in Mughal architecture. Naturally there was a pecking order so there were five floors, the highest nobility used the top floor and so on down. Jaipur is called the Pink City but most of the buildings are more brown than pink.