After a great night sleep we woke up late and got to enjoy the free breakfast provided by the hostel. Over chai, boiled eggs, and toast we chatted with a group of English girls traveling after volunteering for eight and a half months in Hyderabad teaching English. We called the cab driver from yesterday and he sent us an auto that would take us around the city for the day for a fixed price of only Rs 600 ($10). Our first stop was to the City Palace. The huge complex of courtyards, gardens, and buildings were beautiful, combining Rajasthani and Mughal architecture. Today the royal family lives in the palace bordering the courtyard. We wandered the rooms and plazas, marveling at the beautiful gates, intricately painting and carved, in one of the courtyards and stopped to check out the textile museum housed within the complex. It was amazing to get to see all the fabrics and clothes, especially after spending the semester writing about that very topic for my contemporary Indian culture research project. We saw the palace museum as well, which had portraits of Jaipur royalty, thrones, etc.
Afterwards, we walked across the street to visit the Jantar Mantar Observatory. Jantar Mantar is the largest sundial in the world and a world heritage site. The site was a set of many different astrological instruments that I could not really fathom how they worked, even after reading the descriptions and trying to eavesdrop on other tour guides showing how to use some of them. The place itself was really cool though and it was amazing to see all the different apparatuses.
Our auto driver then took us to this mausoleum set up along the base of the craggy hills, with walls of the fort visible along the tops of the hills above. The place seemed abandoned as we were the only ones there and the architecture was absolutely incredible. The white marble domes contrasted with the craggy hills behind them and the light grey clouds overhead made for the perfect lighting. The scenery is what I imagine parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan look like. We explored every inch of the place, even crawling in open pillars to take pictures. This was easily one of my favorite parts of the day so far.
Later, our auto driver took us to this super local place for lunch that ended up being amazing food, and for a good price! We all split channa masala and dal makheni with butter chapattis. In the afternoon we drove by the Jal Mahal, the water palace. Quite literally, it is a palace in the middle of Man Sagar Lake. The palace is actually five stories but all but the top story were submerged in the lake. After snapping a few pictures, we headed to a textile making workshop/factory where we were shown how the block printing was done. We were brought upstairs to their shop and storeroom, where we sat on a couch while they opened different bedspreads and tapestries in front of us. We felt pretty pressured to buy something throughout the process. They were really beautiful though, and while probably overprices, were actually not too bad, so we all ended up with something.
The auto driver let me sit up front with him as he showed me how to drive the auto and then let me try, even on an actual road, which was slightly terrifying. Then we visited the Albert Hall museum, an old and famous museum modeled on the Victoria and Albert museum in London. We saw collections of portraits of kings, costumes, woodcarvings, paintings, beautiful pottery, and little figurines of people in numerous different local and traditional jobs.
By the time we had meandered our way through the whole thing it was past 4:30 when all the other monuments and things to do closed, so we decided to head back to the hostel and rest and relax a while. After a nice break, we all started to get hungry so we asked the hostel staff for their recommendations and invited the British girls to join us. Two of them agreed and we headed down the road to hop in a tuktuk (auto). Once we had flagged one all five of us crammed inside. The driver claimed he knew where he was going, but he also clearly didn’t speak any English so we weren’t convinced. What was supposed to be only 3km turned into over 30 minutes when he took us to the opposite part of town. We had to call the hostel numerous times to have them give directions or pull over to ask passersby. The British girls were hilarious and I found the experience mostly rather amusing. I loved hearing about their time in India as it seemed almost polar opposite from our experiences. They had great stories and we had a wonderful time chatting and laughing about how aweful the auto experience was. Finally, we ended up at the restaurant, refusing to pay the extra money the driver asked of us for taking so long (because it was his fault, and despite some misunderstanding it was clear he mostly did it to scam us into paying more). It was so worth it though for the laughs and the restaurant ended up being amazing. It was a rooftop garden with beautiful lights and plants throughout. I ordered pasta, going out on a whim, and needing a little break from curries, and it ended being up the best in India thus far. We had a similar experience with our auto on the way back to the hostel, but this time I think it really was due to misunderstanding and getting lost. By the time we finally made it back it was already past 11 and we were all exhausted.
Afterwards, we walked across the street to visit the Jantar Mantar Observatory. Jantar Mantar is the largest sundial in the world and a world heritage site. The site was a set of many different astrological instruments that I could not really fathom how they worked, even after reading the descriptions and trying to eavesdrop on other tour guides showing how to use some of them. The place itself was really cool though and it was amazing to see all the different apparatuses.
Our auto driver then took us to this mausoleum set up along the base of the craggy hills, with walls of the fort visible along the tops of the hills above. The place seemed abandoned as we were the only ones there and the architecture was absolutely incredible. The white marble domes contrasted with the craggy hills behind them and the light grey clouds overhead made for the perfect lighting. The scenery is what I imagine parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan look like. We explored every inch of the place, even crawling in open pillars to take pictures. This was easily one of my favorite parts of the day so far.
Later, our auto driver took us to this super local place for lunch that ended up being amazing food, and for a good price! We all split channa masala and dal makheni with butter chapattis. In the afternoon we drove by the Jal Mahal, the water palace. Quite literally, it is a palace in the middle of Man Sagar Lake. The palace is actually five stories but all but the top story were submerged in the lake. After snapping a few pictures, we headed to a textile making workshop/factory where we were shown how the block printing was done. We were brought upstairs to their shop and storeroom, where we sat on a couch while they opened different bedspreads and tapestries in front of us. We felt pretty pressured to buy something throughout the process. They were really beautiful though, and while probably overprices, were actually not too bad, so we all ended up with something.
The auto driver let me sit up front with him as he showed me how to drive the auto and then let me try, even on an actual road, which was slightly terrifying. Then we visited the Albert Hall museum, an old and famous museum modeled on the Victoria and Albert museum in London. We saw collections of portraits of kings, costumes, woodcarvings, paintings, beautiful pottery, and little figurines of people in numerous different local and traditional jobs.
By the time we had meandered our way through the whole thing it was past 4:30 when all the other monuments and things to do closed, so we decided to head back to the hostel and rest and relax a while. After a nice break, we all started to get hungry so we asked the hostel staff for their recommendations and invited the British girls to join us. Two of them agreed and we headed down the road to hop in a tuktuk (auto). Once we had flagged one all five of us crammed inside. The driver claimed he knew where he was going, but he also clearly didn’t speak any English so we weren’t convinced. What was supposed to be only 3km turned into over 30 minutes when he took us to the opposite part of town. We had to call the hostel numerous times to have them give directions or pull over to ask passersby. The British girls were hilarious and I found the experience mostly rather amusing. I loved hearing about their time in India as it seemed almost polar opposite from our experiences. They had great stories and we had a wonderful time chatting and laughing about how aweful the auto experience was. Finally, we ended up at the restaurant, refusing to pay the extra money the driver asked of us for taking so long (because it was his fault, and despite some misunderstanding it was clear he mostly did it to scam us into paying more). It was so worth it though for the laughs and the restaurant ended up being amazing. It was a rooftop garden with beautiful lights and plants throughout. I ordered pasta, going out on a whim, and needing a little break from curries, and it ended being up the best in India thus far. We had a similar experience with our auto on the way back to the hostel, but this time I think it really was due to misunderstanding and getting lost. By the time we finally made it back it was already past 11 and we were all exhausted.