10-17-19 - Jaipur - Corey's b-day, Amer Fort, hawkers & activists
/Day 123. Kyle & Leanne joint blog.
We have only one full day here in Jaipur, so we need to make the most of it. We feel a “Big Sause” day coming on. Our guide today is Vishnu, a father of three and a local. Early In the day, he informs us he is of Brahman caste and the caste system is still very important in the country’s social inner workings. And in the past, your turban colors would indicate your caste.
Today is a special Hindu holiday called Karva Chauth. We learned of it last night that from sunrise to sunset, the wife fasts for her husband’s longevity. Last night, Leanne mentions she will fast for Kylie's long life tomorrow but after he sees her eyeing the hotel’s Marsala omelets at the free breakfast buffet, he released her from even trying by 8:23 am. Kyle silently hopes that Leanne breaking her fast after only 4 mins at breakfast doesn’t significantly shorten his lifespan in any way.
Our first stop is Hawa Mahal, meaning Wind Palace. It’s an intricate red sandstone and marble building facade. It was built by a King for women to see what was going on outside through stone screens without being seen by the men. At the time, women were not allowed to be seen in public during the festivals. The history of India as relayed by our guides is one of a very male dominated society as the guides all say “women had a very hard life.” It brings up an interesting observation we have noticed in India - the vast majority of people on the street (roughly 80-90 percent) and in jobs are male. This will require a bit more digging here but we found it an interesting observation.
Nearly all women (with the exception of some school aged teenaged girls) wore beautiful colorful sarees throughout our travels both in Delhi and Jaipur. Men’s standard non-traditional dress is a collared dress shirt with dress pants or jeans. Very snazzy indeed.
After Hawa Mahal, the bus takes us into the walled city of Old Jaipur where Vishnu explains their city wall is the third longest in the world. He comes it to the Great Wall of China which Kyle points out is a little bit of a stretch given these city walls surround one city and are still a fraction of the size. Leanne forbids him from commenting to the guide on that one.
We come to the UNESCO site of the Amer Fort in Rajastan (near Jaipur). Amer is a town located high on a hill with an area of 4 square kilometers which was originally built by the Meenas in 967 and later rebuilt and ruled by Raja Man Singh I in 1592. The fort is known for its artistic style elements, large ramparts, gates, cobbled paths, red sandstone and marble. Mughal architecture greatly influenced several buildings in the fort.
Our guide arranges an elephant ride up to the palace on the super steep hill, much like 95 percent of the tourists do on this hot, humid morning. Since we have booked through a tour company, we follow schedule mostly to plan with few changes. So if the plan says elephant ride, we follow. While we wait, our guide explains how well the elephants are groomed and cared for with restrictions on their working hours. Kyle points out that India’s elephant labor laws seem better than China’s child labor laws and inquires of the guide if they have an elephant union.
As we walk to and wait in line in the elephant queue, we are aggressively hawked by a swarming mass of vendors selling everything from safari hats to magnets to trinkets to colorful umbrellas. We are all still working out our individual best approach to respectfully and kindly decline hawkers but it’s not always easy. Ignoring them or pretending they aren’t there is definitely not the right strategy as they will just persistently place the item in your face and keep saying “20, only 20, only 20 for you” over and over. Kyle has employed the strategy of looking directly at them and firmly saying “no thank you.” This works; however the problem is that as soon as the one vendor vacates, another immediately replaces him, often selling the same exact thing we just said no to.
This goes on the entire 30 minutes were are on the line. Kyle jokes that after declining the first 36 vendors selling a 20 dollar safari hat, the probability of saying yes to the 37th vendor is somewhere around none to none. Kyle and John start designing a better sales strategy where vendor have to be the first one to accost the tourist when they step off the bus and the vendor has to put together differentiated product bundles. Don’t just sell the same hat as the other 100 vendors, sell the hat, sunscreen, a water bottle and sun umbrellas at a big discounted bundle price. Kyle add yet another potential post-Internet career opportunity – start a business to send US salespeople to Jaipur for an intensive “sales training experience.”
More broadly, India definitely has the most solicitors of any country we’ve have yet seen. They even have their own name “the hawkers” (which we renamed the dreaded hawkers). Women bang fiercely on the bus windows at red lights to get our attention and ask for money, some holding babies gesturing they need money for food. Our guides have warned us not to give money even though we want to help because if we are seen giving money to one, there will be a mass amount of people who see and will swarm the bus asking for money or trying to sell something and the bus will be temporarily immobilized. Really quite sad.
On the elephant ride up, we see an American on the side of the road. He sees Kyle and Leanne and gives us a big thumbs up. Kyle returns the thumbs up smiling. The American proceeds to shout at Kyle “way to go, way to support animal cruelty!” We have come across one of the animal activists. We honestly hadn’t thought of that aspect of it. If he had stopped there, he would have achieved his objective of having us rethink elephant rides in the future.
However; the animal activist turns into the ugly American a**hole when he shouts at Kyle, “next time you should walk, it’ll help you lose some weight….you lazy butt!!!!!” He proceeds to call out every elephant rider in a similar manner. Unfortunately, his brutal insulting diverts attention from his animal cause by his slinging out personal insults that have now gotten us all hot and bothered. Probably not the best idea to insult folks from New York and New Jersey.
Instead of a discussion about animal rights, the ensuing discussion is about how poorly he represented our country (we did mention he was an American) and what gives him the unilateral right to insult any and everyone he deems isn’t acting consistently with his own beliefs. We question what he does to be a productive member of society and that insulting people must be how he justifies his existence. We totally support everyone’s right to free speech and their own opinion but he definitely crossed the line personally insulting our family. Kyle is only glad the “Momma Bear New Jersey” Leanne was confined on top of the elephant or that dude would have had a serious issue on his hands. Had he been located with photos or brochures before we hopped on, we probably would have just changed our minds. Location, location, location.
At the top, we are rewarded with sweeping views and a beautiful palace with red sandstone facades painted in long lasting vegetable paints. It’s bright, colorful and quite intricate. And there’s so much more to see. A labyrinth of a garden. Carved marble paintings. Long marble hallways. Watchtowers for women and men. Mughal open air halls with elephant carvings combined with Muslim-style of simple curved outlines. It’s unlike any other building we have seen to date.
The palace had 12 separate rooms for the King’s 12 wives with numerous other rooms for his 300 concubines. Kyle jokes that he will have to build eleven more rooms to our house when we get back home. Leanne looks at him something fierce, points a finger and says firmly “only one wife!” Kyle readily agrees as he can only imagine how difficult it would be to placate that many women.
After this beautiful palace, our guide must think we are cultured up enough for the dreaded yet standard shopping stop. A couple of the kids are so sick of these stops they don’t even get out of the bus for the “Demonstration” anymore. Today’s demos are wood block painting, rugmaking (yet again), gem cutting and miniature painting (today’s handicraft events!). Note to self: we really need to rejigger the schedule the next few days to avoid these completely - we are missing good UNESCO time! The good news is that it was Corey’s 17th Birthday so he scored a couple of great gifts.
Our last stop was Jaipur’s City Palace where we enjoy beautifully painted and embroidered textiles including outfits muharawas wore playing billiards, polo and getting married. We get there right as a high school field trip arrives so we all barely fit in the former palace. We are told India had hundreds of royal families at the time of independence but they have since lost all power unless they entered politics and were elected to office. But it is still a thrill to see what royals did with their privilege in their lifetimes.
Like Jai Singh II. Founder of Jaipur. In the 1730s, he built five different architectural astronomical observatory’s in India. The one we visited, Jantar Mantar, is a UNESCO site. There we see how he built sundials and other solar instruments to measure a year, the time, the zodiac signs, latitude, and the Earths position with just the use of marble, wood, cement and obviously a ton of mathematics. It was another discovered gem that filled in our science and math requirement for the day.
At sunset, we head back to the hotel having seen most of Jaipur’s top highlights (and spent way too much time and money on “handicrafts”!). The hotel is a Heritage Hotel and a former royal palace with open spaces, tropical plants, ceiling lamps, antique furniture and wicker chairs- giving us a true sense of colonial India. The muhawara or prince of this palace - Muhawra B. Singh II - was a medical doctor educated in Scotland and knighted for his work. There are black and white photos of his life throughout the property, giving us a look into one man’s impact on Earth.
It is a beautiful location to celebrate a birthday as Corey turns 17 today. We have a lively, happy dinner to celebrate with chocolate cake and banana splits for dessert. And on this 17th day, we are now exactly 4 months to the day into our year-long adventure. A third of the way around our world. So much of the world we have seen, yet so much still to see.
