We end the day at the City Palace which is very close to our accomodation. Here we are planning to spend the rest of the daylight before returning to the hotel for sleep. It is quite expensive to enter however at least we are hoping that inside we are free from the usual hassle that we encounter wherever we walk. Right at the entrance is an interesting pink car that we photograph just because of its connection to the Pink City, Jaipur.
In the middle of the courtyard is Mubarak Mahal, a beautiful building built around the early 1900s and housing now the Museum of Textiles.
Next we pass near the Tripolia gate, from the inside, the gate that we couldn’t enter from outside. It is gated and under surveillence also from this side but at least we do not have any need to use it anymore. And then we search for more museums, there are a few, so we can visit them before they close. However instead of a museum we find a handicraft market with multiple artists including one that produces beautiful drawings that we can’t resist buying.
Afterwards we find the museums and visit them speedily as we want to see as much as possible as long as there is sunlight. There are some interesting objects here with a focus on objects owned by the maharajahs.
We continue exploring the palace with the beautiful halls that are quite popular with the visitors for artistic photos.
We then end in Pritam Niwas Chowk a beautiful courtyard anchored by four beautiful doors. While a theory is that they represent the four seasons in Northern India they traditionally have six seasons so it is quite unlikely.
However the most beautiful of the gates is the peacock gate with a beautiful peacock motiv around the top of the door. It is very popular with many people taking photos in the door.
We then get captured by a common scam here. The guards invite us to a “private” area quite insistently and given that they are guards we follow them but they only take photos and then expect money for it. We are quite annoyed and escape by saying we don’t have money, it is really something else to not be able to trust even the security guards in the monuments. We escape into the most beautiful of the buildings in the City Palace, the Hall of Private Audiences. At this point it is getting dark but still we get some good photos before exiting and starting walking back towards the hotel.
We enjoy the short walk to the hotel, there are less scammers and hawkers in the evening and the walk is more peaceful that way.
We have one more stop before the hotel, at the Govindam Retreat restaurant next to the hotel. It has lots of sweets so we point at four of them and take them to the hotel as our dinner. They are quite good and then we struggle to start the heat and it is time to go to sleep as tomorrow we have a full day exploring Jaipur.
