The Road to Jaipur


This day was by far our longest day of the trip. We started before the sun was even up to see the Taj Mahal. After that we packed up and headed to Jaipur. 

 Our first stop was Akbar's Palace, Fatehpur Sikri. It was the capital of the Mughal Empire from 1571-1585. It was built as a walled in city, so not just a palace. Once Akbar "retired" he moved the Mughal capital to his city to honor the Sufi saint, Salim Chisti. 

 The city palace is beautiful. Raj dropped us off at the bottom of the hill to it and we met our new tour guide. We then had to hop on a bus that took us to the city palace. I feel really bad that I cannot remember our tour guide's name. He talked super fast and his English was hard to understand. He was nice though. He kept having us pose for pictures. Again, I felt like we were getting our engagement photos done again. 










 The tomb of the Sufi saint was lovely. Done in white marble, with the lattice windows. I am so in love with the lattice windows. We both had to cover our heads. I just wore my scarf, and they gave Lyndon this tiny plastic hat that didn't even cover his hair. It just sat on top of his head. People will buy these scarves, flowers, and string to place inside the tomb. The string they would tie on the wall. You don't have to do that. We opted out of that but were still able to go in and check it out. 

 Right as we walked out, there was a huge group of people looking in and taking pictures. Turns out that a really famous Bollywood star had just entered into the tomb. Yeah, I saw him, but just didn't say anything. Just kidding, I have no idea who is big in the Bollywood world. Something to add to my Singapore bucket list.

 We bid adieu to our fast speaking tour guide, hopped back in the van and fell asleep. Just call us narcolepsy couple. Raj woke us up with a surprise stop to see Chand Baori Step Well, a 1,200 year old hindu temple in Rajasthan. It was really cool, and off the beaten track. Not many tourists there at all. This temple was really interesting because the temple was built in like this big hole that had steps going all the way down from ground level to where a pool of water was. Really really cool. The green parrots were flying around and we had a really amazing experience thanks to Raj. We like to squeeze in a few off the beaten track things into our travel itineraries, so this was perfect.  


On the road again, Raj told us to look for a camel caravan. And a couple minutes later there were like fifty camels of all ages and sizes right next to our van. So cool. Then we, narcolepsy couple, fell back asleep and woke up as we were pulling into Jaipur, the pink city. 

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