Hindu Good!

If you stay in Jaipur, I strongly recommend the VINAYAK GUESTHOUSE. It's near the Jaipur Railway station. It's run by a lovely family who live in the building, isn't expensive and is very clean, everything works including the hot water in the shower, and the food served at ithe rooftop restaurant is fresh and delicious. From what I've glimpsed through the window of the kitchen it is prepared by a real, fierce, Rajasthani grandmother. Also, all the rooms and corridors and beautifully painted.

This morning we drove to Amber to see the palace that pearches grandly on top of craggy stone slopes.

On the way there L asked the driver if he was Hindu (which we'd guessed). He affirmed and asked us which religion we were. When we said Christian he congratulated us like we supported a football team he approved on. 'Hindu Christian same-same'.

He then went on to tell us that Amber and Jaipur were better than Agra and Fatephur Sikri because 'Hindu good, Muslim . . .' (dismissive wave of hand).

Hinduism was a stong presence in Amber. Below the palace is the Shri Sila Devi temple (its image of Dila is one of the most sacred in Jaipur) where we first went. This was our first experience of Pooja and it's amazing. The faithful flood into the temple gates with offerings of flowers, coconuts, grain, incense. At the shrine these are handed to the priests and a red pooja mark is places on the forehead of the devout. The place is simply filled with music and scent and colour. This is a very upfront sort of religious devotion. We even saw one young man walking up the stone path to the temple on his knees helped by two friends. A sort of pennance? A special sort of pilgimage? I don't know.

The palace is above the temple and it has been one of my favourite sites so far. Mughal archtecture is grand and wonderful, but the colour and beauty of the Rajasthani Amber Palace is an experince. Surfaces are stunningly painted and The magnificent Sheesh Mahal where the maharaja and queen lived are patterend with mirror and coloured glass. The place gleams.

What we found the most amazing though, was the rabbit warren of baths, rooms, stairs, pavilions, corridors that lay behind. Some parts of the complex were three stories high with stone screens that looked over the lake. Others were dingy little holes. On room had the remains of the pulley system for carrying up water from the lake below and in the deep shaft lives a family of bats. In other rooms were stone latrines.

If a building can ramble this one certainly dose. It also has views that are more than spctacular and on the mountain slopes fortifications rise and dip and rise the line of the rocks.

And if you want any more romance than this, there is a network of deep tunnels beneath the palace for troops to be moved without anyone seeing. (somplete with friendly bats!)

Jaipur palace in the pink city is a different creature. The royal family of Jaipur still live there so a large section of the palace isn't open. But the pink (well, more of a salmon as L pointed out) buildings are interesting and the collections of antique royal garb and weapons are well worth a look.

It's getting into the late 30s in the hottest part of the day now and we asked to be brought back to the hotel early so we could rest and have a walk through Jaipur ourselves. Aimless wandering is harder with a driver.

Amongst e rubbish-eating cattle and street vendors of Jaipur are air conditioned malls, which I read are gaining popularity in India. We came upon one today and it was . . . most odd. Probably more than half the shops were still empty (and they looked like they had never been filled) and those at were there seemed to sell very cheap things. It was quite a ghostly place.

Outside its slick, modern building lay a few street pigs in the mud.