Abdullah Alam
19 Sep 2020
An honest first impression of the capital of the state known for it’s rich, colorful culture.
My trip to Jaipur was preceded by a couple of nights stay in the town, Mandawa. This is a relatively unknown village, and in my opinion, severely underrated. More people now know about the village after the release of PK (2014), as a significant portion of the film was shot here. Mandawa, and the surrounding places are quaint. The abandoned palaces, adorned with carvings painted with vegetable dyes, maze-like narrow lanes; and all of the other things people have come to expect from a trip to Rajasthan, will be found here. It is a town that has retained it’s innocence, and the moderate influx of researched tourists keeps things steadily going.
Jaipur, on the other hand, is ever so slightly too aware of it’s tourist importance. No doubt, the city has it’s merits. Jantar Mantar (more on that in a moment) is bound leave astronomy (and astrology?) lovers awe-struck. Watching the sun set over the city from Nahargarh fort is blissful. The local food lives up to the hype.
However, there is an air of self-awareness about everything.
Most of the things are geared towards tourists. A textile mart, which would’ve been established to nurture the colorful culture in the clothing style of the region, now knows that people will come from all over for that exact thing, and the motive behind the industry has shifted, ever so slightly, to pander to the tourists. While from an economical standpoint, this isn’t necesarily a bad thing, it does tend to leave a vague sense of disingenuity.
No place else was this more apparent, than "Chokhi Dhaani". Chokhi Dhaani is the epitome of what happens when a company see tourists and attempts to capitalize on it for profit. Chokhi Dhaani is like an amusement park. It is the size of an amusement park, walled at all sides, with one entrance, complete with private parking. You buy tickets to enter the place, like you would in a theme park. You stand in the queue and enter the place, and... be utterly disappointed. The place is like a Rajasthan themed park (inside Rajasthan), but without the "park." All around you are fake huts and shades that are attempting to recreate "the Rajasthan experience". There are paid dancers performing the same routines again and again all day for people, a camel that you can ride on that strolls around the park and comes back. A massive queue to eat food that is subpar for the price you pay, compared to what you could get if you asked a local for suggestions.
Nahargarh fort stands tall on a cliffside touching the city. The west-most point of the fort happens to face the city, and that point, aptly, got named sunset point. One would think a fort would be untouched out of respect for heritage. But nope. Sunset point has been taken over by a restaurant, who charges people to even enter the area. The entire fort’s ruins have been refurbished, restaurants and little amusement points set up along the way, some places playing Bolywood songs on loop.
But all of that being side, the net impression of Jaipur, somehow, is still positive.
First of all, the food. The food here is amazing. From the humble Dal Bhati Churma, to heavenly lassi served in earthen pots, and from the simplistic pyaaz kachori, to crazy assortment of all kinds of street chats, the food in Jaipur is a delight.
Interestingly, one of the lesser popular forts, Jaigarh, was one I enjoyed the most. The fort doesn’t boast of fancy restaurants and well paved paths and interiors. It is home to one of the largest wheeled canons in the world, and only the path from the entrance of the fort, to the canon, and back, is lined with tourists, and consequently, well maintained. The rest of fort was pretty much abandoned, and in ruins. And this is precisely what appealed to me to the most.
We strayed away from the main path, and went around exploring the fort, walking around aimlessly, no other people in sight. The view from the back of the fort was breathtaking, with only hills around us, and a lake in the distance that marked beginning of the city. We found another canon, which, unlike the aforementioned famous one, actually looked withered and corroded with age.
By far, the place I loved the most in Jaipur, was Jantar Mantar.
Jantar Mantar is a collection of 19 architectural astronomical instruments built by the Rajput king Sawai Jai Singh II, in 1734. The monument is a UNESCO world heritage site.
It is a vast campus dotted with astronomical instruments made of stone. There are devices that measure the position of heavenly bodies in the sky, the declination of the sun at various times of day, an assortment of various sundials for different sun signs, etc. Most of these structures were built to aid in astrology.
This sundial is made by slicing a sphere at an angle equal to Jaipur’s latitude, effectively making it’s surface parallel to the plane of Earth’s equator. It has a pair, and each show the time 6 months of the year, from solstice to solstice.
There are inverted domes carved into the ground, with a map of the constellations etched into the marble. A loop suspended by four strings casts a shadow inside it, showing the exact position of the Sun against the stars, in daytime.
By far, the most impressive of all the intruments, is called Vrihat Samrat Yantra, which means the “great king of instruments”. It is a massive gnomon sundial (the largest of it’s kind in the world), standing almost 90 feet tall, in the middle of the campus.
The central triangular building, called a gnomon, angled at 27 degrees (again, Jaipur’s latitude), casts a shadow onto a giant arc made of marble. The marble has etches carved into it at regular intervals, allowing one to tell the time by the position of the shadow, with an accuracy of 2 seconds!
Having always had a keen fascination with astronomy since childhood, this place made me giddy with joy.
Even though, on the whole, Jaipur was a mixed bag of things some people might like and might not like, this city has something for everyone, and is, all things said, absolutely worth visiting.
About The Authors
Abdullah Alam
I like to go places, take pictures, and build things. It doesn't need to be more complicated than that.
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