Jaipur is the name of a deliciously citrussy IPA made by Thornbridge Brewery. I've been drinking it for years and I felt it was time to give the city itself a try. It's quite a long train ride from Delhi, so I looked on the timetable for a random place to stop over en route, and that's how I came to spend a couple of days in Alwar first. Both cities are in Rajasthan: it's the first time that this blog has been to a 'stan', if you ignore the slight spelling difference. Plenty to look at here. See pictures.
There has been a slightly grumpy tone in some of my blogs lately, so I should emphasise that I've never had a bad day in India, and more importantly that this is just about the friendliest country of the roughly sixty that I've visited in my life to date. Indians are naturally warm and peaceful people. On these crowded streets, I've only seen two or three unpleasant episodes, all involving traffic disputes, and all settling down rapidly after a brief outburst of raised voices and a little bit of pushing. It's as if, once both parties have saved 'face' by demonstrating their determination not to back down, there's an unspoken agreement that things can go on as they were before. Not like back home in England, where any minor confrontation quickly escalates towards either the police station or the hospital, or both.
It must be admitted that Indian men spit way too much. This is closely associated with their habit of chewing tobacco way too much. Also, you often see men easing their bladders at the roadside. Of course, if they're manning fruit stalls or driving auto-rickshaws, then it's not like they have much choice, and they do at least have the good manners to face the wall while micturating. But with Indian streets, as with Jane Austen's evening dances, one can't help but wonder what the ladies do.
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| City Palace in Alwar |
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| Sagar Lake in Alwar |
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| Jaipur street life seen from the Metro station overhead |
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| Hawa Mahal in Jaipur (1799) Built specifically to allow royal Indian ladies to watch street events & processions... ...without being seen themselves by the plebs. |
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| Albert Hall Museum (1887) in Jaipur |
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| Jaipur at dusk, seen from the path up to Nahagarh Fort |
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| Gaitor Ki Chhatriyan (royal crematory) in Jaipur |
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| Edd vs Food #162 Just what the doctor orders when it's 32°C at lunchtime on the terrace (and I'm recovering from a dicky tummy): Extra spicy Rajasthani chicken curry with roti bread. At the Rajasthane Kitchen in Jaipur |
