Once again the train ride was a pleasant surprise as we were served breakfast, offered a magazine and given a large bottle of water. Then again, we were paying for the top class of service, which was $25 round trip. We arrived late morning and were greeted by numerous offers of taxi service. Our driver seemed on the up and up, so we took him up on the offer to take us out on a tour to see the sights. We were also impressed by his bright turquoise, disco-esque vehicle. (Photo: Susan and our 2nd autorickshaw, the Love Machine)
We started with the City Palace, which was interesting but the highlight was the Observatory, with a number of different instruments such as sundials and planetary markers. The tour was fascinating and all the instruments were still functional down to the minute, despite being hundreds of years old. After this we headed back to our guide, who was clearly stalling for time by showing us odd things. Finally he told us "problems at home" and that his brother (actually his cousin, Indians use this word interchangably) would now be showing us around in his rickshaw. So we were passed off to the Love Machine. (see photo)
We stopped quickly to see the Water Palace, a palace literally surrounded by water. I'm not sure if the area around it was flooded or if it was designed that way for protection, but there was no way inside without a boat. It's currently under renovations so we could only look at it from the distance. Our driver then took us off to a shop, of course. It turned out well, however, as our "sales guy" was a member of the family who now lives in Frankfurt, Germany. He was visiting his family in Jaipur for 4 weeks and said he was going stir crazy at home every day with his mom, so offered to help out in the shop. Therefore, he was the least pushy salesman ever. Susan did find an amazing shawl and I found a cheap one that I'd been looking for, so we left surprisingly happy. I conversed with him mostly in German which was not what I had expected when I visited Jaipur!
Our tour ended with an offer to visit our guide's guru. We were VERY skeptical, but decided it could be funny and would be fuel for this blog, at least. We had to wait forever and were finally ushered into a back room of a jewelry shop. The "guru" read our auras and told us Susan had a "big blue aura" which means she had a lot of energy, but 20% of it was violet, which is not so good. Three of her chakras are apparently blocked. This means she is "sometimes hungry, sometimes not," that she "sometimes has energy, sometimes doesn't" and is "sometimes tired, sometimes not." Sounds like the human race to me. He also told her she has difficulty concentrating and making decisions and that arthritis runs in her family. So he clearly has no clue. I was told that I have a "medium sized" yellow aura, but we realized he never told me what that means, so it must be bad. My aura is 10% black, however, which is a bad color but is ok because "there's not much of it." I was warned that it would increase with age, though. The guru offered after that to help heal us with mineral therapy using precious gemstones, which we politely declined. Funny that his family business is in fine jewelry...
We finished off the night with the world's tamest New Year's Eve. Having gotten up so early, we had energy only for a stop at a kebab restaurant and watching top stories of the year and Bollywood music countdowns. Susan fell asleep just before midnight and I lasted just a few more minutes, after watching the fireworks being shot off rooftops. We were heading back to Delhi the next night so needed to get up somewhat early yet again!
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