The Pink City

Jaipur is known as the Pink City because the buildings were originally painted pink in 1876. We were staying in Jaipur for two nights. The first day after we arrived in Jaipur we went on a leopard safari, unfortunately we did not see as much animals as we saw on the tiger safari but it was still cool. We saw antelope, barbary partridges, peacocks and I spotted an eagle. We also saw leopard prints but sadly we did not see any leopards. The next day we went sightseeing and for an elephant ride!

First we headed to Amber Fort where we went on an elephant ride it, was really cool! Our Mom and I got the first elephant and our Dad and Brooklyn got the second elephant. The elephants had a saddle on them but you had to sit sideways looking out beside the elephant instead of infront of the elephant. The elephant brought us up to the top of a big hill where the Amber Fort was located. The fort was built in the 16th-century and is a fort and a palace, with a 2km secret passage leading to Jaigarh fort. We didn’t know there were secret passages so we didn’t look for them.

We then went to the Water Palace which is a Palace built in the middle of the Man Sagar Lake. The palace has five floors and four of them are underwater! The palace was built between 1743 and 1746.

After a few photos we went to the City Palace. The City Palace has the worlds largest silver vessels, weighing 345 kg! The vessels could hold up to 4,000 liters of water. We decided to go to the Jantar Mantar Observatory, which has the worlds largest sundial. We also saw all sorts of other instruments including:

• Rasivalaya- A group of 12 gnomon-dials designed to measure the ecliptic coordinates of celestial objects.
• Stone sundials- Can Measure time.
• Great Ram- Two cylinder instruments used to record the azimuth of celestial bodies.
• Raj- A large bronze astrolabe.
• Kapala- Used to record celestial body coordinates.
• Equatorial sundial- There are two, one for summer and one for winter, they also tell time, but it’s a different way to time.

On the way back to our bus we saw someone doing henna on the side of the road and we really wanted to get henna in India. We took a quick stop, I got an elephant, Brooklyn got flowers and leaves and our Mom got flowers too but a different design. Once the henna was done some, our Mom wanted to get her eyebrows threaded because they were apparently messy and it originated here (I thought her eyebrows looked just fine).

After that we went back to the hotel to pack for because we had to get up at 4:30am to make our flight!