It was time to start panicking when the holidays started showing familiar signs of turning into one huge lazy Sunday afternoon. All suggestions of making short, adventurous trips to the nearest hill station were thwarted. Finally, after much cajoling, nagging and other such tactful processes which involve becoming a terrible nuisance, my parents and my cousin’s parents agreed to send us to Jaipur. We boarded the Bangalore to Jaipur express on a cloudy Saturday morning and were soon engrossed in long spells of Pictionary and other pointless games. Like trying to guess what state we were in by looking at the scenery outside the tinted window. The train journey lasted for almost forty-two hours and unless you have a lot of time on your hands like we did, I would suggest a flight. 

When we finally reached the Jaipur station, the first thing that struck me about the place was that Jaipur, contrary to all misconceived expectations, was far from being a dry and arid place. There was quite a lot of greenery around and luckily for us, the weather was also quite pleasant. The second thing was of course that the city was, in fact, really ‘pink’ due to a certain genius called Raja Ram Singh, as we later found out. 

One of my father’s oldest friends commands an Air Force unit in Jaipur so it was decided that we would be staying at his place. Vasu uncle’s house was situated right on top of a hill and in a typical Air Force fashion, was called ‘Station House’. Amongst other things, the Station House overlooked the Jal Mahal, housed a couple of rabbits in the garden and played host to a number of peacocks. Our hosts, Vasu uncle and Bharti aunty were extremely hospitable. All this significantly led to us being in upbeat moods all through our trip. Significant, mainly because clambering through a countless number of forts and palaces with fresh enthusiasm takes a large amount of energy and patience. We needed all the help we could get!

The first place we visited was Jaigarh fort, which is known for its collection of medieval cannons. However, there seemed to be only one cannon, the Jaivana, of any importance. This cannon faced a huge water storage tank, one of the many that the Fort is known for. Jaigarh Fort also offered us a spectacular view of the city. From that height, Jaipur looked exactly like all the glossy pictures in travel magazines. Like all overwhelmingly beautiful things, the scene of hundreds of box like houses stacked haphazardly against each other, held us in its grasp for a long time. We were told that the fort was visited most during Diwali time when everyone gathered on top of the fort to watch the whole city basking in sound and light.

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We then visited the Amber Fort and Nahargarh Fort. Amber Fort was actually a complex surrounding Jaigarh Fort. A museum inside the fort showcased ancient weapons, cannons and other warfare. But, the museum was badly lit, slightly small and very crowded so we didn’t enjoy it too much. Amber Fort sprung a small surprise on us with its exquisite Sheesh Mahal or Hall of Mirrors. Apparently, in the olden days, when in need of lighting, the people who used to live there would light up a match and the whole place would light up because of the number of mirrors. We weren’t allowed to go inside the hall but a quick look from the outside was sufficient to leave us enthralled.

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The next day, we visited the much talked about City Palace. The City Palace was different from the forts that we had visited the previous day in the sense that it was well maintained, more airy and looked a lot more recent. The palace had a distinctly classy air to it, spoilt just a little due to the number of shopkeepers who constantly tried to sell overpriced traditional ware to every passerby. It consisted of innumerable numbers of rooms full of artifacts, miniature paintings, vessels, fans, weapons and other ancient, royal, Rajasthani paraphernalia. By now it had started to drizzle and the whole place was full of foreign tourists running around in colorful, outdated raincoats. 

We went to Jantar Mantar next. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. But to do it some justice, this was probably because I was a little perked about how we were charged a minimum of forty rupees each for entry, camera and parking everywhere. Nevertheless, all the strange looking sundials and the other obscure structures fascinated us. Our fascination only supplemented by the fact that even the placards by their sides couldn’t portray their purposes with too much clarity. We spent almost all our time there trying out strange camera techniques. 

My only regret was that we missed out on the local food. The original plan was to eat Dal, Bati and Churma for lunch but our driver took my suggestions for a ‘hygienic, good restaurant’ a little too literally and we ended up eating Misri Roti and Gatta in a posh, air-conditioned restaurant called Copper Chimney.

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Hawa Mahal was last on the list. It didn’t look very inviting but the moment we stepped inside, it radiated some inexplicable charm that made us fall in love with the place. The Rajasthani Tourism Department didn’t seem to have tried too hard with the museum and quite frankly we were a little bored of looking at quaint, ancient, antique pieces. All that left us with was rows of spiral staircases that led to the top of the Mahal where we were offered a view of Jaipur as it really was, up close. Busy streets overflowing with rickshaws, alleys almost bursting at their seams with a various assortment of shops and pigeons in breathtakingly huge flocks! But out on the roads, amongst hundreds of foreigners, we could see locals who were probably on their way to school, college, work and it was only then that we realized that outside the slowly decaying buildings, life still went on, albeit in minuscule quantities.

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We expected Jaipur, with all its stories of sophisticated aristocrats, with all its legends of war and prosperity buried deep within the walls of its forts, to take us back in time for a short while so that we could store its people, its smells and its colors in our memories. It satisfied all our expectations in every respect. Jaipur had turned out be the small, dreamy and beautiful city that we had always imagined it would be.