With the genius of James Hetfield and Co for company, the miles flew by and we found ourselves entering Jaipur city. Our halt for the night was to be the excellent Ramada Hotel, and the maps indicated that there was a bypass road leading there. My first impression of Jaipur was what I like to call the ‘big city feel’. It’s the impression you get when you go to Mumbai or Delhi, like you’ve just entered a sea of humanity that’s in an unbearable hurry. The traffic appeared flustered, and the city looked as if it had expanded to such a degree that the roads couldn’t keep up with the sheer volume of traffic any longer. Through the traffic and throngs of crowd, and after a quick stop for a refreshing drink of roadside nimbu-paani (lemonade) we arrived at the hotel and packed it in for the night.
Another short but comfortable night’s sleep and then back in the Santa Fe. The Hawa Mahal is probably the most illustrious structure in all of Jaipur, and that was why we chose to go there first. It is located in the heart of the city, in the old part of Jaipur, the one that lent it the moniker of ‘pink city’. The 50-foot tall, five-storey palace was built in 1799 by Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh. Hawa Mahal literally means the ‘palace of the winds’, called so because the unique façade of the Mahal is designed with 953 windows in a latticed pattern for maximum air flow. From the Hawa Mahal, we drove towards Amer Palace (also called Amber Fort).
