Jaipur Continued....

Sorry for the abrupt ending yesterday... we were enroute to delhi and had to jump off at our station.

So as I was saying, We checked out a bunch of the touristy sites in Jaipur including City Palace, Hawa Mahal and Jantar Mantar.

City Palace and Hawa Mahal were lovely buildings to visit, but after having seen so many other palaces and forts, they were all sort of starting to blend into one another. We were also starting to become a little dissillusioned with the blatent display of power and wealth of the rulers over the common man. Many rulers would tax thier people severely to pay for the construction of ther personal palaces and homes.As a result, the degree of suffuring for the average man was often severe and extreme. As we started to realize the human cost that was exacted in establishing these property's and empires we were slowly becoming less and less impressed. The otherwise astounding architechture is often marred by stories of abuse, war, and death inflicted on the poor by many of the rulers. As a result thousands were often injured and even killed during the construction of these properties, that were typically only designed to further the ego of the ruling class. 

Jantar Mantar on the otherhand really was a site to see. Designed as an Astronomical Observatory, Jantar Mantar is one of 5 such sites erected by Maharaj Jai Singh II to predict movment of the constellations, arrival and departure of the monsoons, change in sea tides and various other vedic cosmology. It was also designed to measure time, as it houses the Worlds largest sundial. This sundial is accurate upto 3 seconds, and is so large that you can actually see the sun beam moving across the stone platform with your naked eye. Pretty cool stuff.

After our sightseeingin Jaipur, we popped back to the train station to head over to Udaipur. At the station we met a british dude, who looked like hed just stepped out of the 1920s. I decided his name was gonna be Sir Bradley of South Piddington, after he started telling us about his facinating life as a jewel Monger. He was quite a funny dude, and told us he had been travelling through india for years and had seen just about everything this country had to offer. But when we saw a paper bowl move around the platform, seemingly of its own devices, he was as shocked as i was...turns out there was a cockroach the size of my middle finger crawling  around underneath...later we saw a rat the size of a kitten catch the roach and trot away. To be honest, I had a bit of a tough time sleeping that night.

That night we headed over to Udaipur.

Well thats enough out of me for now, stay tuned for my Udaipur Update!