Jaipur, India

Jaipur is known as the Pink City – the story goes that in 1876 the Prince of Wales was visiting, and they decided to give the place a lick of paint. And nearly 150 years later, it’s still pink.

We were staying at the Hotel Pearl Palace, a steal at £20 a night. We had a spotless little room, the walls embellished with murals and carved hardwoods. On its roof, a little restaurant which serves up a delicious dinner, where we headed there for dinner on our first night in Jaipur. It sounds blindingly obvious, but the curries in India are on another level. We’re fairly spoiled in the UK with so many great Indian restaurants, but in India they’re incredible. The naans were butterier and crispier, the sauces were richer and more flavourful, and the service in every single restaurant was exemplary.

In Jaipur we enjoyed a full thali at Rainbow, a large tray of smaller dishes, with rice, curries, yoghurty dips, vegetables, lentils, breads and even a little sweet dessert. We had no idea what we were doing, dipped all the wrong things in all the wrong pots, made a right old mess and had a thoroughly excellent lunch. Another restaurant highlight in Jaipur was Handi, where we ordered a selection of kebabs, which were grilled to order over open fires along the entrance to the dining room. The skewers were hot in every sense of the word – we realised that most other restaurants must have been toning down the spiciness for our feeble western palates.

And it wasn’t just the food – the drinks in India are superb too. One day we headed off to ‘Lassiwalla’, reputed to be the best lassi in town. Hilariously, the two shops alongside it had decided to try and copy them to pinch some business, resulting in three separate shops all looking near-identical. We checked to make sure we were going to the original, and got stuck in. I went for a salted lassi, which was delicious and refreshing in the Jaipur heat. And because their lassis are served in a little terracotta cup, there are no issues with waste – they can simply be reused or recycled. 

We enlisted the help of a tuk-tuk driver from just outside our hotel, a chap called Khaled, who gave us a tour of the out-of-town sights of Jaipur. We spent half a day at the Jaipur Fort, dodging the monkeys and donkeys and admiring the views from the ramparts. And it was here where the Jaipur chapter of Nicola’s fan club turned up. I was looking out at the surrounding mountains from a turret when I turned around and noticed a gaggle of people were queuing up by Nicola, all keen for a photo. We dutifully held a brief photoshoot, everyone got their photos, and we left to explore the rest of the fort.

On the way between Jaipur Fort and our next stop we overtook an elephant, which was quite a surprise. Apparently, although people can generally afford trucks, there’s still a few people who prefer the traditional method of using elephants to transport heavy goods. After navigating our way through the traffic of tuk-tuks, cars, trucks and now elephants, we stopped at the royal crematorium, Gatore Ki Chhatriyan. We looked around for about half an hour before deciding we’d seen enough, but were promptly sent back in by Khaled, who decided we hadn’t spent long enough looking at it. I think he wanted to finish hanging out with his other tuk-tuk mates by the gate. 

Nicola had read somewhere that Jaipur was a city of tailors, so that afternoon Khaled took us to a block printing factory, and we were treated to a little tour that inevitably turned into a sales pitch for some clothes. I resisted as I was certain the whole thing was a commission-based tourist trap, but Nicola succumbed and was soon being measured up for a bespoke pair of trousers and a top. Two days later they were delivered to the hotel, and Nicola tried them on. They didn’t fit. A quick call with the tailor and they were returned to the factory, adjusted, and couriered back to the hotel within a couple of hours. Great service, to be fair, even if she almost certainly got ripped off.

There are also plenty of things to see within the walled city itself, including Jaipur City Palace. It’s a nice palace for a wander about, and I particularly enjoyed the peacock gate – the mosaics in India are just so nice to look at; I’m not sure why we don’t have more in England. But we made many future plans for bathrooms, all of which will probably look terrible if we ever do them with whatever tiles we can find in Wickes.

One of the most famous buildings in Jaipur is Hawa Mahal. And with good reason, it’s an absolutely beautiful palace. The five-storey building – apparently actually the back of the palace – has nearly a thousand little latticed windows. It was designed to allow a cooling breeze into the corridors behind, and to allow royal ladies to see out without being seen. The only downside of the Hawa Mahal is that everyone knows it’s a beautiful building, so the road outside is entirely rammed, and the cafés opposite are packed full of influencers creating content. We passed the building later at night, and it was quieter – and at dusk it’s even more beautiful as the light filters through the windows. 

The final place I was keen to visit in our time in Jaipur was Jantar Mantar. This complex of astronomical instruments was built by the Maharaja Jai Singh II in the 1700s as a way to measure what was going on in the sky – both at night and in the day. There are 19 instruments built in stone and marble, all designed to measure or locate different things in the sky. One gives the time at four observatories around the world, one helps locate the pole star, one has 12 dials which measure the signs of the zodiac. I could go on, but my favourite was one called Vrihat Samrat Yantra, thought to be the world’s largest sundial, which can tell the time with an accuracy of two seconds. You could see the shadow travelling at a very slow but steady pace along the notches in the stone as the minutes ticked by. The whole place was fantastic – in hindsight we should have got a guide to give us more detail of every instrument; I wasn’t expecting to find it as fascinating as I did. Still, a good excuse to return to Jaipur.

After a fantastic few days exploring the pink city, the sun set on our last night in Jaipur and it was time to board the 12015 Ajmer Shatabdi train to our next destination in Rajasthan: Pushkar.