We're currently in Jaipur, a city a half-day's trip from Delhi. I hesitate to write that it's less chaotic than that mind-blowing, sensory-assaulting capital, but it is. But only slightly. In Delhi it was basically impossible to step back and enjoy the tableau, so thick was the static of the crowds and filth. Jaipur is turned down ever so slightly and we had a blast just walking the streets and looking around.
Jaipur is the brainchild of a Maharaja, the great Jai Singh II, who ruled in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. This guy was a true renaissance man: he not only laid out a walled city (the Pink City) with neatly divided rectangular sections which promoted (relative) order, but he commissioned a remarkable observatory. It's called Jantar Mantar and upon entering the low-walled site you might get the feeling that you're in a sculpture park full of geometric monuments lying at all angles. But they're actually instruments for measuring things like time and the movement of the planets and for calculating eclipses. Before the observatory was built, Jai Singh sent his best thinkers to Europe for two years to learn astronomy. Jaipur grew strong and prosperous under Jai Singh's rule, attracting the region's best merchants.
Today Jaipur is the swirling antithesis of western suburbia: asymmetrical, disorderly, filthy, bright colors on dull, decrepit backgrounds, and loud, punctuating sounds. The animation is at a fever pitch with people jostling each other, the women in beautiful sari and salwar kameez and the men's teeth a sticky red from chewing paan. Rickshaws swerve and motorbikes avoid one near collision after another. We've posted some pictures in "Our Photos" as usual, but here's a few of our favorites from the last couple of days.
No comments:
Post a Comment