India Trip Day 2 (Jaipur) - City Palace, Amer Fort, Nahargarh Fort & Jal Mahal

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. 

If you have read my previous post 'India Trip D1P3', you'd prolly know where I was currently at. 

Here's a sneak peek of today's post

I woke up at 5.30am. It was still early, but I had slept for 8 hours, the ideal sleeping time an adult should get. Some said 6 hours, but let's not go deep into that haha. Breakfast was not included in our booking, but I couldn't remember what did I have for breakfast that morning. I guess it must be either my friends' food or the mini snickers and mars I bought from WHSmith in the airport. Alhamdulillah I have understanding friends who were willing to share their food as I brought none except the ones I bought in India. Blame my clothes haha. 

After we checked out and kept our luggages in the extra room behind the reception desk, we left Zostel. City Palace was one of the places that we planned to go, so around 9am, we already went out and walked to the City Palace, which is about 11 minutes away on foot. The entrance is situated in a turn-right street before reaching Hawa Mahal.

Just left Zostel Jaipur when this photo was taken. Yes, the Zostel is located in this street.

Kachori in the making. Wish my tummy was strong enough for me to eat street food.

Here's a photo of a barber shop while I was on my way to the City Palace.

We were stunned a few metres before the City Palace, looking at a flock of birds! They were literally everywhere in that small area just by the roadside. People stopped, bought some bird food from one of the sellers sitting nearby and fed those birds. I immediately knew the food was more than enough once I noticed how fat those birds were (I wonder if there was any of them who can't fly because it can't afford to take up its own weight) and the food that was not eaten, ending up on the floor.

One of the uncles who sold bird food.

As you can see in the photo below, a guy was buying some bird food, while another guy who was wearing a helmet seemed to drop by for awhile just to feed the birds. It is a ritual they do it, especially in the morning as a start of the day before proceeding with something else. 

CITY PALACE

The ticket for City Palace is a composite ticket, which you can not only enter the City Palace, but also other few monuments. I thought of getting the ticket for City Palace only. Unfortunately, there were none. By hook or by crook, we had to buy the composite ticket costed Rs500 each person for tourist. It was quite expensive and we didn't have much money. All of us only had about Rs3000 - Rs4000, which in Malaysia Ringgit was about RM180 - RM240. The optimistic part of us said that the money was enough for 1 week, nonetheless we still had to be careful.

The gateway of the City Palace. Pass through this and you'd see a ticketing counter on the left side.

The foreign student ticket price was Rs300, Rs200 lesser than the tourist price, but none of us brought our student ID card and only Fatin brought her Siswa Card. We told the ticket guy that we are from the same university, but he seemed hesitant at first, so we asked him is it okay if we showed our photos together. Without wasting time, Fatin showed the photo in her phone; last day of exam and we were in our lab coats. Few minutes looking at the photo and the ticket guy agreed to give us the student price Rs300 weeee. The ticket was included entrance fee to City Palace, Jaigarh (the fort I think), Royal Cenotaphs (I have no idea what is this) and camera without tripod.

*Bring your student ID card even though you don't study in India.

Well by the way, most of the time Sanaa did the talking part because she can speak Hindi and not all Indians know English.

City Palace was a palace complex a few hundred years ago. It is comprised of a few buildings, which had different functions and roles that time. Let's skip the facts and details. Here are some photos taken in the City Palace. Enjoy!

Look at how nice the shadow was at that time.

In front of the Diwan-I-Khas, the hall for public audience.

This is the view from inside. There are 2 huge sterling silver vessels on the right and left sides in the photo below. Those vessels are made by a king to carry the water from Ganges River to be drunk on his trip to England. They were made from 14000 melted silver coins! 

The entrance arch to other buildings. Look at how the gateway is richly decorated.

As we went there quite early in the morning, there were not many people yet. Those at the back as you can see in the photo below were actually college students who came here for a study visit.

Tak nak besar lagi ke muka tu, Ardilla? Haha

One acah candid photo of me.

And the photo below shows Mubarak Mahal.

Here and there we went, wandering around to find the perfect place with nice lighting to take good photos, playing with the shadows, adoring how fine they take care of the red sandstone and looking at the white marble elephant and the big silver pot-like container. We spent less than 1 hour in the City Palace before going back to Zostel, where we can get wifi, to book an uber that could take us to Amer Fort.

A group of kindergarten kids who came here for a study visit I guess.

We stopped by at a shop by the roadside to buy some fridge magnets. The seller told us that the price for each fridge magnet was Rs200 each. But after bargaining, he reduced it to Rs60 each, yeay! But I shall try the acah-acah-tinggalkan-kedai tactic hehe. 

*Make sure you bargain before buying anything. 

AMER FORT

Uber left us in front of Amer Fort, also known as Amber Fort or Amber Palace. Though it has its own fort, but there's another fort that functioned to protect it as well, which is called Jaigarh Fort, about 15 mins away by car. You guys might be wondering why is the fort far away from the palace? If it were that far, then how can it protect the palace, right?

Actually, there's a secret passage between the Amber Palace and Jaigarh Fort, and it still exists even until today! But, it's quite creepy to crawl inside there because I heard it's dark, long and narrow. This passage was used to transfer the royal family to the Jaigarh Fort whenever there was an attack at the Amber Palace.

After the main entrance. Green green grass, green green water.

Here's a closer view of the fort. The water is so green, ikr!

The palace is situated up on the hill. There are 3 ways to reach the palace; by riding an elephant, taking a jeep or walking and we chose to go on foot! It took us about 10 to 15 minutes to reach on top.

Along the way up the hill, there were people selling items such as hand-made shoes, umbrella, keropok besar I don't know what its name, etc. And there was even an uncle who sat at a spot with his weighing scale for anyone who wanted to weigh him/herself, but I couldn't remember what was the price. I think it's a brilliant idea somehow haha. 

Pandai kome cari spot lepak best ye?

It was scorching hot, but the wind was cool.

View from one-third of the climbing phase.

An elephant for those who prefer to ride on it, rather than walking. I read somewhere that elephants here have certain limits of number of passengers per day, but I don't know how truth is the article though. I'm still against it. Pity this poor animal. 

Another way to go up is by taking a car or a jeep.

Open sesame.

It was time for the elephants to leave Amer Fort. If I'm not wrong, they are available only from 8 or 9am in the morning until 12pm in the noon. 

I was kinda curious at first, wondering why there was no ticketing counter for us to pay for the tickets. Baru ingatkan dapat masuk free ke haha. Apparently, the ticketing counter was inside the Palace compound and we had to buy it before we could enter the building of the palace itself. Supposedly for foreigners, we needed to pay Rs500. We could get the Rs100 for student price, but like what I'd told you, none of us brought a student ID card.

Fortunately, we found someone who was willing to buy the ticket for us with one condition - he became our guide. Rather than paying extra Rs400 for each ticket, we agreed to that. He was actually a student tour guide, and of course as a student, he needed to practice before becoming a real legal one. He helped us to buy the Indian ticket for only Rs100 each.

There's an old palace down there. I forgot what was it for.

From left; Fatin, Najwa, Me and Sanaa. By the way, be careful with a guy who sells money. He came to us and asked if we could help him to change RM50 that he had with Indian Rupees. None of us accepted the offer because it might be a counterfeit money.

Here's the entrance to the Amber Palace. Of course, you must show the ticket you've brought downstairs. Student tour guides, though they were not legal tour guides yet, the guards seemed to know them and they needed no ticket to enter the palace.

A performance by 2 kids.

The Ganesh Pol or Ganesh Gate, the entry into the private palaces.

A picture of Najwa, Sanaa and I under the curved space a part of the Ganesh Gate.

Penat jalan duduk jap.

The tour guide told us that the architecture here is a mixture of Hindu and Islam.

Here's the Sheesh Mahal, which is the Mirror Palace. There are mirror mosaics and coloured glasses.

A star-shaped pool with a fountain at the center.

High stairs, narrow way, lead to somewhere.

Creepy, huh? There's a lot of rooms up here.

View from above.

In the photo below, from left; Fatin, Najwa, Sanaa and the tour guide

If I'm not mistaken, the photo below is a part of the secret tunnel that connecting Amber Palace and Jaigarh Fort. There were bats hanging inside this tunnel. Couldn't really appreciate their existence unless if we squinted our eyes and looked carefully, as some parts of the tunnel were quite dark. We only had a glimpse of how it looked like before turning back to where we came. 

He wanted to bring us to the old palace situated downhill at the back of the palace. It seemed quiet and a lil bit creepy down there, so we decided not to follow him. We already gave him some tips when we were inside the palace and headed to the exit and tried to find a cab.

The old city from the stony border.

What are you doing there alone? Lari ehhhh.

Upon observation, I noticed the gates / borders whether it's a fort or a lake, they have about the same pattern - stony, curvy, pointed edge and square-shaped hole in the middle of each of them.

Just realised my camera lens had some spots. "It's too late~~~"

We didn't manage to go to Jaigarh Fort due to time constraint as we thought the architecture and design must be more of less the same, so we chose to go to another fort, overlooking the whole Pink City of Jaipur from above, which is the Nahargarh Fort. Climbing up to Nahargarh Fort wasn't in our choices at all as it is far away up the hill, about 12km, not like Amer Fort.

With no mobile data and no cab around, though tuk tuk was our last choice, but it seemed there was no other mean of transportation available. We saw a hotel nearby and tried our luck to connect the free wifi there, and much to our surprise, it connected! Immediately, I clicked on the Uber app and tried to find an uber. Found an uber and made a deal with him to bring us back down, back to Zostel Jaipur and stopped by at Jal Mahal. He accepted the deal with the price of Rs600.

To Nahargarh Fort we go!

NAHARGARH FORT

The uber driver gave us 40 minutes to walk around inside the Nahargarh Fort. We had to pay for the parking Rs40 and instantly went to the ticketing counter to buy the entry ticket. The ticket price for tourist was Rs200, while for foreign student was Rs25. At first we thought we got the foreign student price, so the total amount we had to pay was supposedly Rs100, but suddenly Sanaa told us to only pay a TOTAL of Rs20! It appeared that they gave us an Indian student price, Rs5 each person! Rs5 is only about 30 cents (RM0.30). That was super cheap. Glad we had Sanaa with us, who helped us to buy the ticket every single time.

If you read my previous post, you'd prolly know what happened to my shoes. This time one of the pair was ripped off from the front! I planned to pull out the sole, but just noticed the guy yesterday sewed my shoes on the back, so I couldn't do so. End up, I just tied using strings I got from the face mask Sanaa brought.

Finding the perfect place to view the whole city from above.

A mysterious pond. I wonder what's the story behind it.

We didn't know where should we climb to see the whole Pink City of Jaipur and guess what, we went and climbed kind of a platform to view the picturesque city from above, but the effort was worthless as we could not see clearly. Sanaa yelled our names to get our attention and had us over to the end of the stony gate, where we could look at the whole city. But our intention vanished into the thin air when we heard someone shouting from afar - it was the guard!

"Dia tengah panggil kita ke?" 

"Entah. Tapi siapa lagi kat sini." 

He shouted again and pointed to the opposite way. Apparently, we were on the wrong side. Siap sampai panjat lagi. No wonder there was no one hahaha.

From celah tembok batu.

We went to the opposite direction and entered a building. Here's a photo from one of the windows in the old building. Hi monkey!

A sneak peek.

We were finding the staircase which leads us to the rooftop.

I present to you.. The Pink City Of Jaipurrrrr! Please ignore the disturbing spot.

I wished I had more time to stroll around and walk from one side to the other.

It somehow looks like a maze, innit?

We went back from Nahargarh Fort to Zostel Jaipur by the same Uber we came.

A child was one of those who were digging the drain as we passed by. According to our Uber driver, they dug the drain as it will be used to supply water to the top of the hill, where the Nahargarh Fort is. Some of them were women in sarees! When we asked why don't these kids go to school, the driver told us, "This is their school." To be honest, I was saddened and felt touched. We should feel really grateful for having a proper education when there are children out there who can't go to school because they have a drain to dig on. Silently, I prayed they would be strong as they always do.

JAL MAHAL

Jal Mahal is on the way back to Zostel, so we decided to stop and spend a few minutes just to see how the place looks like. There was nothing much to see and it was scorching hot. We spent about 10 minutes, taking photos here and there and decided to go back to Zostel.

I just realised that camels are cute when they sit! Look at how they bent their legs hehe.

Jal Mahal, a palace in the middle of Man Sagar Lake. No one is allowed to enter.

In the car, we thought of going to Jantar Mantar, so we requested to drop us off near Hawa Mahal and walked from there to Jantar Mantar. It was not our day as the Jantar Mantar was already closed, so we decided to take a tuk tuk (aka the auto) to MM Khan Hotel to have dinner. The tuk tuk guy charged us Rs70 for the journey.

Luckily the tuk tuk guy knew where's the MM Khan Hotel.

Before the tuk tuk guy left us there, he ordered the owner of the shop to take care of us and make sure we would get the best. Such a nice old man he is! We were brought into a special area, felt like VIP haha. I ordered chicken briyani and also 1 half fried chicken to be shared among the four us. The briyani was spicy, but I really love it! Spicy food is my favouriteeeee hehe. Then we went back to Zostel and reached there around 6pm, just on time for chai party at the roof top. 

The other tourists who stayed in Zostel joined us as well. More tourists came after that.

My second chai in India. 'twas soooo good! I wished I'd taken another cup of it.

We spent our time, lepaking in the common room before going to the train station for our night train. There was another drama at the train station, of course. We had to run at the train station. 

Why? 

Stay tuned. 

More photos on Dyllarezan's Instagram

All posts;

India 14 Days Trip - The Intro

India Trip Day 1 Part 1 (Delhi) - Airport & Honk

India Trip Day 1 Part 2 (Delhi) - Scary & Scared
India Trip Day 1 Part 3 (Jaipur) - Hawa Mahal, Jama Masjid & Muhammadi Palace
India Trip Day 2 (Jaipur) - City Palace, Nahargarh Fort, Amer Fort & Jal Mahal
India Trip Day 3 (Udaipur) - City Palace, Udaipur Ropeway & Bagore Ki Haveli