After changing dollars and becoming rupee-rich again and then refreshing ourselves in our small hotel room it is time to explore downtown Jaipur, the reason we have booked this hotel. We can actually walk from our hotel to most major attractions downtown and this is what we do. Surprisingly the path takes us through the palace grounds which are now freely accesible, or so we thought.
We enter through one of the impressive gates, pass next to abandoned buildings, avoid all the tuk-tuk offers and exit through another gates avoiding the traffic to the best of our abilities. There is no pedestrian walkway so cars and trucks use the same gate door as people which makes awareness of your surroundings a great skill to have.
We now exit on one of the main roads in Jaipur that will take us directly to one of our goals, Hawa Mahal, the Palace of the Winds. We think we already found it when we pass an imposing building however it is only the city hall so we continue on past the many small shops and stalls.
Hawa Mahal is not far away and we admire it from the opposite side of the street first before climbing to the Tattoo Cafe which allows us to watch it from higher up distancing ourselves from the chaos of the street. Hawa Mahal was built in 1799 by Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh and is similar to a honeycomb with 953 small windows. It was supposed to allow royal ladies to observe everyday life and festivals in the street below without being seen. The design also allowed cool air to pass through making the whole area more pleasant during the high temperatures in summer.
From the roof of the cafe we can enjoy almost panoramic views and it is especially fun to see the snarled traffic below…until we remember that we will have to brave it also next day. Still it looks almost like a end of days movies with cars as far as we can see honking and trying to pass without really making any progress.
To enter into the cafe you have to get some vouchers that you can redeem for food. We do just that, it is great to have a break in the daily Indian food before continuing on south where the only option will be Indian food again. Not that we don’t like it but a bit of variety doesn’t hurt really. We still cannot resist to get some gulab jamun though, they are so tasty.
Then it is time to get closer to the Palace of the Winds, it is very impressive from up close even though this is really the back of the palace. We decide to try to enter it as it is supposed to be quite cheap 50 rupees.
The entrance is via a few back alleys and when we get to the ticket office we have a surprise, that shouldn’t have been a surprise. The Indian ticket is 50 rupees as expected but the foreign ticket is six times more expensive. We think about it and decide to skip, we have a few more stops planned and in our understanding it is not that special inside really. So we return to another main street and decide to walk along the palace walls towards another entrance to enter the complex towards our next goal.
We arrive at the chosen gate and discover to our displeasure that it is an “official” gate for the local Maharaja and his friends and not for plebes like us. The palace is weird in that way, because the former Maharaja still lives in part of the palace with his family while another part is a museum while most of the grounds and gardens are public areas now. So now we have to turn around to our original gate which we now is open to reenter the complex.
We return the same way and even enter a few stores along the way to buy some souvenirs. Who knows where we will find such an opportunity again? And then we are back in the complex and are looking for the Jantar Mantar, the ancient observatory that is an Unesco World Heritage Site.
