We had a wonderful trip last four days, no rain and we got clear views of all places
we went. As I said in the previous post we stayed in "The Trident", Jaipur. Trident
is on the highway going to Amber fort, opposite to Jal Mahal. When I booked after
seeing the hotel in their website,
I thought the Hotel is on the river bank (as shown in the left photo below) and it
will be great. When I actually went there I realized that the hotel is on the
other side of the road, and in between there is a park. One good service in the hotel
is that of "Kids Club" where you leave your kids safe and they have
toys, TV, books, games and trained people to take care. My son Vaageesh loved the
place, I wish all other vacation hotels adopt this. The view from the park to Jal
Mahal is beautiful but the park maintenance and cleanliness have to be improved greatly.
Day 1: In Mumbai we had few hours for transit from Chennai to Jaipur,
I decided to go out of Airport rather than spend few hours inside. We took a taxi
and went to Oberoi Mall (Dindoshi, Gen AK Vaidya Marg, Off Western Express Highway)
which is probably the closest mall to Mumbai Domestic Airport. It took some 20 minutes
one way, we had a good time there and had a great UP style vegetarian Thali (set lunch)
at Sanskriti restaurant. We arrived in Jaipur in the late evening and after check
in I went to their travel desk (which is oddly not manned by the Hotel but by Avis).
When I approached the Avis representative, for planning my itinerary for sight-seeing
next few days, he was only interested in selling his "Car Rental" services. He started
the conversion by saying and then repeating Avis'es full-day/half-day charges, I had
to raise my voice before he started to talk about the itinerary. Though he said it
was not required, I insisted on having a "Guide" to accompany on both the days so
that we can understand what we are seeing.
Day 2: On the second day we started around 9:30AM and went first
to Amber
Fort, which is near-by to the Hotel. The fort is not at a high altitude so the
car journey to the top took only few minutes. If you wish you can travel royally in
a Elephant
Ride to the top which costs about Rs.550 per person. Amber fort has a beautiful
palaces used by the kings then - a Summer
palace and a Winter
palace. We then went to see the Madhavendara
Palace inside Nahargarh Fort. The palace has 9 compartments for king's 9 queens
- it struck me if the king married once more for 10th time, he would have had a tough
time expanding the palace!. Each Queen's compartment is self-contained with a Kitchen,
Bedroom and Living area - you can see most of these rooms intact with the furnishings
& fittings removed. The top of the fort has an excellent view of the entire Jaipur
city. Our guide Mr.Rajiv did a great job in showing us all the places and explaining
it in detail. (You can see
the photo album for more details on what we saw).
For lunch we went to Pink City Restaurant which served good Thali
and you can see the cooking clearly as they have an open kitchen. After lunch, we
went to Jaipur Mall we saw how the block
printing is done in textiles using natural vegetable colours.
Our guide recommended us to try staying in heritage hotels like Samode Haveli in our
subsequent trips to Jaipur.
In the evening: We went to the famous tourist restaurant - Chokhi
Dhani which is nearly 1 Hour drive (closer to airport) from Trident. It is a theme
restaurant on a wide open space modelled like a typical village market of Rajasthan.
Entry fee is Rs.300 per person which includes Dinner. They are open only from 6PM
to 11PM. My son loved the rides - you have camel rides, elephant rides, horse
cart rides and more. There is also model
Rajasthani village houses for you to see. We stood in the dinner queue for over
30 minutes before being let in (crowded). The seating was in the ground with traditional
low-height table for eating. The food was rich with lots of butter and ghee in almost
all dishes- so be careful to eat limited if you wish not to gain weight. You can unlimited
helpings of all the served items.
Day 3: Today we had another guide Mr.Vijay Singh for our city tour
of Jaipur. We saw Hawa Mahal from road, I believe there is nothing much to see nowadays
inside. Then we went to Birla
Mandir and had a good darshan there.
Then we went to Jantar
Mantar (which is near city palace) the centuries old Sun Dials and other instruments
which were way ahead of their times in their accuracy of readings. The large instruments
there are believed to be used for both Astronomy and Astrology. Our next stop was City
Palace. We saw the 350Kgs
Silver urn used by one of the earlier Kings to carry Ganges water during his visit
to London. Apart from the usual items that you will see in a palace, there was a huge
display of weapons in the Queen's Area of the palace. It had variety of daggers -
one that can open up and be turned for maximum damage to the victim, one that shoot
apart from the cut, 15Kg swords, metal helmet cutters and more. The kings seem to
have spent a lot of money and talent, on fighting wars and building weapons. (You
can see
the photo album for more details on what we saw)
We had lunch in Peacock Restaurant which had a decent food but a very ordinary service,
so if you are not near-by you may want to skip this restaurant.
In the evening: We went for shopping to Jaipur Haat (which was walkable
distance from the hotel) and bought some traditional style dresses. The varieties
and the service was excellent, though the dresses were little pricey.
Day 4: We left this day intentionally free, spending the time relaxing
in the room. In the evening we went for a walk to Jal Mahal (the mosquitos were too
much on the road, making it difficult to walk).