Our adopted rickshaw wallah, Muktar, is waiting for us this morning and we drive out to Jaigarh Fort which sits on the hilltop above Amber. This huge and austere fortress has commanding views of the surrounding area towards Jaipur and the < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
Water Palace in one direction and over the hills around Amber to the vast plains that stretch out into the distance beyond. As we stand looking down on the palace buildings of Amber and admiring the vista we can see the monsoon rain clouds rolling towards us. We are in for a downpour. We acquire an unsolicited ‘guide’ (who is actually a uniformed palace guard) as we make our way round, which is fortunate since the palace quarters are a maze of courtyards linked by dark, narrow corridors and we would never have seen everything on our own. Andy chunters all the way round as a result; he hates having people latching on uninvited and having to pay for the privilege, even if it is only a few rupees. There is a little puppet theatre consisting of a puppeteer and a musician who put on, for a donation, a very short, but amusing performance involving four puppets – a belly dancer, two acrobats and a snake charmer – the whole thing can’t have lasted more than three or four minutes. We trot round what by now is starting to become a familiar Moghul palace layout – some prettily decorated buildings not quite as impressive as some we have seen. There is a beautiful formal courtyard garden with fountains (not working) though with two tall arches framing the mountain view beyond. Once through the palace buildings our unofficial ‘guide’ expects a tip despite the signs about the place stating that tipping is not allowed and after paying him a small sum we make our way to look at the Jaya Vana, the world’s largest wheeled cannon, which also has the distinction of never having been fired in anger. It is certainly enormous. Another man tries to insinuate himself as our guide to reel off information that is openly on displayed alongside the cannon. We give him short shrift.
The monsoon clouds we spied earlier have caught up with us and we, and several other people. are forced to take shelter under an arched gateway. It’s only a short downpour but there seems to be an amazing amount of run off as a result and when we get back to Jaipur there is quite a bit of localised flooding. Interestingly, Indians don’t seem to bother with rain capes or umbrellas; they either brave the rain or take shelter and wait for it to pass.
We have rather miscalculated our itinerary not realising that most monuments close at 4.30pm and it is already 3.30pm when we find a restaurant to have lunch. So we have to forgo the Hawah Mahal (Palace of the Winds) and the Temple of the Sun God and instead decide to visit the jewellery bazaar after lunch. At least that is the intention, but Muktar has other ideas. The bazaars are not a good place to buy jewellery apparently; he knows somewhere that is much better value and takes us to a small shop up some back alley that we would never have found in a thousand years if left to our own devices. We cynically, and perhaps somewhat uncharitably, assume that it is somewhere he gets commission. It turns out to be a good place though after a little haggling we return to the hotel with two bracelets (for me) and a ring (for Andy).