Jaipur

Today I'm spending the day in Jaipur, known as the Pink City. It's a large city, about 2.5 million people, and one of the most popular with tourists. For a rather quick trip to India many people see the "Golden Triangle" of Delhi, Jaipur and Agra, because they're fairly close together and you get to see a decent range of things. Jaipur is a hub for commerce now, popular for textiles, jewelry, and probably a bunch of other things (like the flower market in the picture).

I walked from the hotel about halway to the old city before I was able to catch a tuk tuk. It doesn't look that far on a map, but this city is fairly spread out. The old city is surrounded by a wall and nearly all the buildings inside are painted pink. It's not a bright pink, as you can see to the right, but kind of a dull reddish pink. Apparently this was done to disguise the poor building materials used when it was constructed in the 1700's.

After walking around the crowded streets for a while I went to the Jantar Mantar, an observatory built to accurately predict horoscopes of all things. Astrology is huge here, nearly all people have a family astrologer that tells them when to get married as well as their futures and all that. It was a pretty cool place, kind of like a sculpture garden for astronomers and astrologers. The one pictured is a sundial built to tell the time within 20 seconds. It's a pretty cool "little" sundial.

After that I headed to the Hawa Mahal, the most famous landmark in Jaipur. It's basically a large set of balconies with very little building behind it, built so women of the day could watch the goings on in the street without being seen. Now it's just a cool looking tourist trap. On my way there I had a minor brush with a bull.

I'm not sure if gore is the right word, cause he didn't break the skin, but it might be and it sounds cool, so I'm going with it. I was gored by a bull. I was walking along the street and apparently got a little too close to a bull (they're everywhere) when he surprised me by swinging his head (and sizeable horns) into my right thigh. I got a brush of the tip of the horn, then the side of the horn and after that his big old head. It's been sore for the few hours since then, but I don't think it's anything more than a bruise. I was pretty startled though. You don't expect them to attack since there are people everywhere around them all the time, but I guess it happens. I'll be okay.

Tomorrow, off to Agra for the Taj Mahal. I'm excited.

This computer seems to hate blogger, so if the formatting is really weird I apologize.