From Agra, we drove to the pink city of Jaipur to see some of the famous ancient palaces and learn more of the culture of India. Upon arrival, one can understand why it is called the pink city- it is pink. Literally. The gates, infrastracture and palaces are mostly made of the reddish (or pink) sandstone just like the Hawa Mahal palace whose architectural design was inspired by the crown of Krishna, a Hindu god.
Here in Jaipur, we experienced our first Princess Moment with the elephant ride up the Amer fort or Amer palace. This is once home to the Rajput Maharajas (great soldiers) and their families, of royal lineage. This impressive architectural jewel stand magnificent (and yellow) on the semi-dessert region of North India. The palace is surrounded by a stone wall all throughout which keeps enemies away from its territories. The surrounding walls almost resemble the great wall of China 🙂
The palace also houses a floating garden where plant spices and some ornamental plants are grown. This is not your ordinary garden as it is shaped and designed like a carpet when seen from above.
Nowadays, the palace is home to thousands of pigeons watching over the entire place.
From the palace, one can have a view of the old city (in royal days) as well as the modern-day city.
The old city.
The new city.
And trying to get a perspective on both cities, I made a shot where one can see the contrast between the old and the new. Here, one can also see the man-made (palace wall) and the natural (mountain ranges) barriers of the old and new cities of Jaipur, respectively.
The Amer palace attracts thousands of tourists every month and even on a hot summer season in India, tourists can not resist to visit and photograph this said attraction. This picture is just a proof of its popularity to tourists like me. 🙂
Thanks to these ladies in blue sari uniforms who maintain the cleanliness of the palace.
After seeing the palace, we went higher up into the mountain to get a view of the Man Sagar Lake which houses another palace called the Jal Mahal Palace or the Floating/Water Palace. During dry season, the lake dries up and the palace in the middle is accessible by walk, but when the water rise up during the rainy seasons, it is only accessible by boat. The palace is a home to nobody, but it is a palace anyhow, and now under continuous renovation by the government of Rajasthan, India. It is now one of the major attractions in Jaipur.
Later that day, we visited a number of shops to learn and experience the old-day industries in India which up to now are still celebrated. First stop, the hand block printing. Hand block printing is a method of printing fabrics or textile printing. It is the earliest and the slowest method of textile printing, but is considered the best (and most artirtic). Here, designs are carved in to a block of wood and prints are transferred into a fabric by dipping the wood into a dye, then pressing it firmly and steadily to create impressions into the fabric. Note however that a series of impressions must be done in order to achieve even the simpliest of the designs. In printing a simple elephant design, we needed to make 4 different impressions, meaning 4 different block designs and 4 different colors. A fifth block was used for the India in the design (see photos below).
Chemical oxidation was done to fix the colors into the fabric so the colors won´t fade.
We also took a little educational tour to carpet making…
and jewelry manufacture and design.
The shop showed us these different precious stones commonly used for jewelries their names I forgot the minute I walked out of the shop. But what really impressed me are the artists who design jewelries from things which appear rather common and not artistic to me. In the photo below, the artist is designing an elaborate ring of diamonds inspired by the shape of a colliseum. 
Another educational tour we took is a visit to the observatory Jantar Mantar. The obervatory houses a collection of astronomical instuments and was built by Maharaja Jai Singh II inthe 17th century.
Our tour was great so far and we were learning a lot about Indian culture and history. But I must say it´s a litlle bit too much and I am getting sick of seeing some more palaces and hearing stories about royal families which is not in existence anymore. And at this point (our 4th day in India), I wanted to experience three things: see a Bollywood movie in India, witness an entire cricket game and actually learn to understand how the game is played, and have a Palace of the Wheels experience. Unfortunately, I was not able to do these things. It was not scheduled in our group tour itinerary. This is the thing about going on a group trip, you can not really do everything you want. But it was not bad. My travel buddies are great travel buddies. 🙂
This is the nearest I can come up to seeing a cricket game – A photo showing a neighborhood playing cricket one early summer morning. This was taken from our hotel room on our second day in Jaipur. 
Anyhow, who knows? I might be going back there again, right? Or may be not.
Captured 