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Aug. 24, 2009 On Sunday, August 23, 2009, I went with a party of a dozen Indians on an excursion to Jaipur. Jaipur, a city of 5,000,000, is the capital of the Indian state of Rajasthan, one of the states neighboring the National Capital District, New Delhi. Jaipur is called the Pink City because many of the buildings in town are built of pink sandstone. The distance from Delhi to Jaipur is some 150 miles, most of which we crossed, in our air-conditioned van, rolling along four-lane highway. I was picked up at 6 AM at my hotel in the Karol Bagh district of Delhi. We spent the next hour picking up other people in various locations around town. By seven we were passing through Saket, a fashionable neighborhood of Delhi, on our way. Soon thereafter we passed through Gurgaon, in the state of Haryana, which probably qualifies as a suburb of Delhi. I was amazed at the great number of modern office buildings in Gurgaon, all in state-of-the-art postmodern design. If you didn't know it, you'd've thought you were whizzing somewhere in west Los Angeles. Only the sight of Indian cattle, humped zebus, taking their ease in the planted median strips reminded me that I was in India. The countryside southwest of there is mostly green farmland. Some of the villages along the way are austere, but I didn't see the abject poverty that I have seen in other places in the vicinity of Delhi. As we approached Jaipur, I was surprised to see elephants and camels walking along the shoulders of the highway. I saw one caravan of seven or eight camels carrying logs. I saw half a dozen individual elephants in a ten-mile stretch, nonchalantly swaying as they lumbered forward. Of course, cattle were everywhere--in the fields, on the roadside, in the median strip, on the sidewalks. Our first destination was the Amber Fort, a palatial citadel built in the low mountains east of Jaipur. Our van could not negotiate the steep, narrow, broken streets that lead to the fort, so we had to transfer to Jeeps. The fort was a beautiful place, with inlaid tile walls, similar to faience or majolica, and whole partitions of intricate marble tracery. The fort had many turrets, domes and battlements overlooking a river that flowed below in a valley between mountains. There was enough climbing of stairways and ramps to be done to get to all the best lookouts, so we were there well over an hour. Our next destination was Jantar Mantar, a seventeenth century astronomical observatory equipped with large stone and metal sun dials, astrolables, compasses and armillary spheres. As we walked to Jantar Mantar, we passed a point where two men were playing wooden flutes to charm four cobras that rose from their baskets to listen to the music. After Jantar Mantar, we visited a factory where printed silks and cottons were being made and sold. Barefoot men walked about on a platform spreading out folded lengths of cloth. They were not rolled in bolts, as in the West. We visited some other shop that had sandals and leather goods. Later, we stopped at a place where rides on an elephant and seven or eight camels were being offered, and where most of our party took pictures. Finally, around 6:30 we started home. I don't know why it took so long to return. We seemed to be rolling at about 40 or 45 miles an hour, though we did stop 45 minutes for supper. The bus cost $20 and admissions came to less than $10. If you're interested in these things, take a look at the top six photographs on this page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10024490@N05/ ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Visit my website here. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! 
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