The maharaja, with the rifle, in the observatory

This hotel is gorgeous but it’s large (90 rooms) and the personalised service that we enjoyed at our boutique hotel in Jodhpur was missing. Breakfast was buffet style with a few Indian offerings and was fairly pedestrian. Our guide today was Mr Singh, a lovely man who has been guiding in Jaipur for 22 years. He was probably our favourite guide so far with plenty of stories and a good sense of humour. He did a little head wobble when he agreed with something (like a bobble head) that made us giggle a bit. He won my favour right away when he talked to the boys about how important their mother was.
Jaipur is a planned city, with a grid layout and wide streets. That didn’t change the traffic chaos and the variety of transport didn’t help - cars, camel carts, scooters, hand carts and tuk tuks, with people on foot weaving in and out adding to the confusion. We became some of those human weavers when we stopped and crossed the road to see the outside of the wind palace (a facade for the royal ladies to sit behind and watch processions). There were three snake charmers outside the bus - Mr Singh said that the hot air from the flutes is what attracts the snakes and makes them rise up. I’ve included a photo below. We passed a KFC but it was a knock off, “King Fried Chicken” , although still decorated in red and white with the familiar font.
We continued on to the Amber Fort where we were guided through with a constant stream of interesting stories and historical and social commentary. Mr Singh was a bossy photographer and he made sure we have plenty of good photos to help remember the fort. It was pretty magnificent, and, like the fort at Jodhpur, highly defensible. I wondered how the Mughals had ever taken power, and then after that, the British. Mr Singh gave us some good insights about the change agent of gunpowder, and weakness of not working together.  Afterwards we made a brief stop to look at the water palace. This was built on the lake to attract birds (for shooting) and used as a picnic area by the royal family. It’s closed now but if anyone ever puts a restaurant there it will be a destination experience.
The observatory was our next stop. Built in 1734 it is a set of nineteen giant structures used for astrology- one that pinpoints the location of the sun, one that tells the current zodiac sign etc. It looks like it could have been built  recently, and the accuracy is within a few seconds/degrees . It’s hard to believe how advanced these people were so very long ago. It’s an odd contrast when you then consider the current lack of clean water to drink.
Across the street was the City palace. My favourite was the costume museum. The highlight of this for the boys was the clothing of Madho Singh - a seven foot tall king who weighed 215kg. You can imagine the size of his dresses... There were some odd displays of rifles arranged in fancy patterns on the walls. The royal family still lives in the palace and I kept thinking of the parallels with Windsor castle and hundreds of people trooping through to gawk. There was a large, armed security presence at both the observatory and the palace. We can’t quite figure out the metal detectors as they beep all the time and no one seems to care.
Our lunch stop was tasty and reasonably priced. When the meal was over the owner brought over a tray with large sugar crystals and aniseed on it. He showed us how to put a small scoop of each into our mouth. Apparently it aids digestion and is a breath freshener. Whatever the point, it was something new and we were all interested.
We finished off our outing with a walk through a old city markets. As with Jodhpur, these are real markets for residents, with no tourist tat in sight. Lots of the shopkeepers are practing their trade on the doorway or on the street in front of their shop - carving legs for settees, weaving bed bases, and sewing on ancient looking singers.There were a lot of street vendors here and the snacks looked good. Flynn was very wistful that we couldn’t try them and there was a group discussion at some stage as to whether the packaged ice creams might be ok (decision no).

Back at the hotel for some downtime, the boys’ plans to use the hotel entertainment offerings (quoits, table tennis etc) were crushed by the blocked off areas being set up for an Indian wedding. They ran with another game of chess before an excellent dinner at the Italian restaurant at the hotel. We are yet to venture out for dinner anywhere, being worn out by the time dinner time arrives and happy with the convenience of the hotel.