Jaipur - November 20th

After seeing 7 UNESCO world heritage sites in 5 days, we decide to rest a little.  And indulge in a little shopping therapy (mostly for Dorota).  So we get a tuk-tuk down to a shop recommended by Lonely Planet which has no haggling.  We’re sick of it, not because of the haggling, but because there is no concept that sometimes we just don’t want anything.  Dorota is used to looking at things, deciding if she likes them, and walking away.  They don’t let you walk away here, which means we no longer look in the first place.

After visiting this shop, its associated café and bookshop, we walk back to our hotel and wait for an arranged pickup by auto-rickshaw for a trip out to Amber Palace.  This is another fort located on top of a hill to the North of Jaipur.  Our driver is supposedly knowledgeable about the area, although we get warned about him by our hotel owner (which is weird, as he was sent by the hotel to pick us up yesterday).  However he offers no guidance at all and leaves us to explore the palace on our own, which suits us.

The palace itself it nice, although we are getting tired of palaces by now.  After this we want to go to see the sunset over the city from Narangarh fort.  Again perched on top of a hill this fort overlooks the whole town.  So you would think it would be easy to find.  Not so for our ‘knowledgeable’ guide who gets lost and asks for directions.  The delay means we have to run up the hill to try to get sunset, which we miss.  Still our bad luck is good luck for some tourists who have been stranded up there and can’t navigate their way back, so we lead them down.

We forestall the inevitable attempt to bring us to some shop at which he will get commission by telling him we have reservations for dinner at a nice restaurant.  We don’t, but we have unfortunately had to learn to lie and be rude to the Indians, as they lie and are rude to us (and each other).  Luckily the restaurant is empty when we get there, however the driver hangs around for a while outside in case we come out.  We wait him out and walk home but it is an annoying end to the day.