18 May 2008

Jaipur

Our first stop outside of Delhi was Jaipur, the Pink City. Even though there are over three million in the city, it still felt much smaller compared to Delhi, which has about seventeen million. The air is cleaner and the pace seems slower. It was a nice change of pace after all our "adventure" in Delhi.

One of our first stops in Jaipur was the Jantar Mantar, or observatory, the largest of five in India. Above is picture of a sundial showing the shadow falling on the arc, allowing a view to tell the time. All of the instruments on the site were very interesting because of the precision that went into their construction. For example, the angle of the sundial must be the same as the geographical latitude that is is located on, which in this case is 27 degrees. Below is another sundial on the site, the tallest in the world. Because of its size, greater precision is possible. This giant sundial is accurate to within two seconds.

We also visited the Red Fort, another popular stop in Jaipur. We apparently were there while some tourism advertising was being filmed. Below are some colourfully dressed ladies posing at an entrance to the Fort. What you don't see are the cameras, giant reflecting screens and all the directors, although you can see two of their assistants in the photo below.

And then the band showed up and performed, while the cameras filmed them with a nice backdrop of the hills. The kid in this picture danced and played the tambourine to everyone's enjoyment. We had a nice time at the Fort just sitting and soaking it all in.

Of course, Heather had another photo request.

I'll leave you with another picture of the ladies performing for the cameras.

17 May 2008

Terror in Jaipur

Things have been busy around here lately. I've had a string of deadlines at school, but I'm past that now and am clear for about the next month. So I think I should get this Around the World trip wrapped up.

First though, some bad news. Earlier this week, Jaipur was hit by seven bombs which detonated nearly simultaneously. This was one of our stops in India, and will be the next one I cover, so it was particularly sad to see a place I visited so recently scarred in this manner. The TV coverage showed some familiar sites--nothing touristy, just the day to day things, like a damaged train just like the ones we rode.

I'll probably post again tomorrow with good things from our time in Jaipur. But for now, they are hurting there.