Jaipur, India

We're back in the state of Rajasthan, but this time in the capital and largest city of Jaipur — population 3 million.

Jaipur is the third point on the Golden Triangle: we've been to Delhi and Agra, and now we're completing the triangle.

Jaipur was founded and planned in the 18th century by Maharaja Jai Singh II, who gave the city his name (geddit?). We found the old city both beautiful and ugly: the ancient buildings are opulent, grand and awe-inspiring, but a few kilometres away there are shanty towns, broken pavements and litter where poor people (and street cows) live. The contrast is very sharp. The new city of Jaipur is more modern and cleaner, but has none of the ancient charm.

I have invented the Pavement Index for India: poor areas have narrow, broken, dirty, tree-less pavements where people and animals walk in the street (score 1); upmarket areas have intact, broad, clean pavements that are shaded by the leafy trees (score 10). You can work out levels of privilege by the quality of the pavements.

Jaipur has two World Heritage sites. The first is the Walled City of Jaipur, a planned complex built originally in the 1500s that includes the Amber Fort and the City Palace. I say the Amber Fort, which is what all tourists (and guides) call it, but it's actually called the Amer Fort. Turns out it's situated in a little town called Amer about 10 km from Jaipur.

We head up to the fort in jeeps. They're needed because the roads are narrow, hilly and extremely bumpy.

We even have an informal traveller join us on the back of the jeep. No, not the goat. But this is where we started to see lots of goats.

Can you see the wall built on the top of the mountains around the fort? This is the second longest wall in the world, after the Great Wall of China.

I was very sad to see elephants still being used to carry tourists up to the fort. Our guide KK says that all elephants are technically owned and protected by the Indian government, but the only regulation is that elephants cannot work all day. So there's a limit on how many rides they're allowed to do in one day.

That's Maota Lake, the main source of water for the fort. It's also where a summer garden was planted for the queen and her attendants.

Inside the fort complex is a palace. (Of course there is! Palaces litter Rajasthan!) It's built from red sandstone and marble, like the other palaces, mausoleums and monuments in northern India. I glared my disapproval at those elephant-riders but I don't think they noticed.

This fort and palace are picturesque and very photo-friendly, so like the Taj, it's a favourite site for photographs. Since October is wedding month, there are many bridal couples posing on the ramparts. (I bet Maharajah Jai never saw that coming.) They are very happy to be photographed by all of us too. KK asks each of them whether it's an arranged match or a love match. This is a perfectly acceptable question, it appears. Both arranged and love matches are common, but weddings for arranged matches have a specific date that is most auspicious for the ceremony (calculated by an astrologer who has worked out the compatibility of the couple based on their time and place of birth), whereas weddings for love matches (no astrologer involved) can happen on any day of the calendar.

Unlike the gals of social media today, the ladies of the maharajah's court sat behind the trellised windows above the entrance; they could see out but could not be seen by the common people. I'm hearing the phrase 'the common people' a lot. Caste, class, royal hierarchies ... India had/has it all.

The decorations in the palace are ornate and exquisite. It's like a Versailles: a monument to wealth and power, but really it seems to me that it's a monument to artists and craftsmen.

The palace has four levels, each with a courtyard garden; water features and channels were designed to cool down the rooms. Many of these were intended for the women in the fort, so they could take the air in privacy.

Another one of Jai Singh II’s projects was Jantar Mantar, the second UNESCO World Heritage Site in Jaipur. This amazing place is devoted to astronomy. For the 1700s, this was remarkable science. There are no telescopes but each of the odd structures, called yantras, allowed court astronomers to measure the time of day, the time of the year and the time of other countries in the world with remarkable accuracy. I mean really remarkable accuracy – to the minute. The instruments could also measure eclipses and constellations. Astrologers still use some of these instruments today to determine which days will be auspicious for weddings.

Our guide around Jantar Mantar was a professor, astronomer, historian and astrologer. He guided us through the large site and when it started to rain, we sat under a gazebo and he told us about ourselves according to our birth date, time of birth and place of birth. I am Pisces with Jupiter ascending; my colour is yellow (whaaat?); I’m social, education focused, kind-hearted, energetic, interested in nature. Could have been worse.

Jaipur has been known as the Pink City ever since it was painted pink in 1876 to welcome Queen Victoria. Only part of the city is pink, within a set of gates, and it’s repainted every 10 years. Because many of the 400,000 people who live in the Pink City can't afford to buy the particular shade of pink, the Indian government funds the repainting.

We say pink, but it's more a kind of ochre colour.

Passing through the old city at midday, we noticed these two little boys sitting on the pavement. Why weren’t they at school, we asked KK. They’re Muslims, he said, and Muslims don’t send their kids to school. It’s not mandated by government – parents make decisions for their children, and many choose not to attend school. The Indian government runs a midday meal program to entice children to school, but KK says that it’s had limited success in some communities. The Muslim areas tend to be the poorer areas that we saw.

Have a look at the small stalls below that sell long strings of plastic sachets. Each sachet contains a mixture of chewing tobacco and betel leaf. It's an inexpensive intoxicant for poor people, who chew this mixture and spit out red saliva, from the betel leaf. This habit is also the leading cause of oral cancer in India.

Another group that we saw in Jaipur were the Jains. The Jains are a sect that derived from Hinduism (as did Buddhism) in the third century BCE. The Jains are strict vegans; they do not eat anything that requires the death of any organism. They eat plants grown above ground, but nothing that grows below ground, because removing the plant from the earth kills the microbes that are present on the roots of the plant. Jain monks are either naked (true) or wearing white robes. Apparently the British were horrified by the naked Jains. It’s quite a wealthy sect (very low clothing bills?) and we passed a number of Jain temples being built.

The City Palace is the home of the Jaipur royal family. The current maharajah is the Queen Regent, who does a lot of charitable work as do her daughters. Her son, the heir apparent, is a good-looking playboy (our guide’s description) who is not yet mature aka responsible enough to rule, so his mother continues in his place. These impressive gentlemen are the palace guards.

The palace now includes a textile museum (no photos allowed). One of the more bizarre displays is the clothes of a king who weighed 440 lbs/200 kg. His underwear stretches out to about 2 m. You won't be surprised to hear that he died young. Another king drank only (holy) water from the Ganges. When he was invited to visit the king of England, he had two enormous silver vessels made so that he could take enough water with him. And we talk about conspicuous consumption?

It was while we were admiring the palace that it started pouring with rain. Pouring. The immediate benefits? The crowds dispersed. The downside? Wet feet and bad light for photos.

Going back outside into the old city streets, wet feet was the least of the locals' problems. Apparently the drains are notorious for blocking up with discarded plastic bags when it rains. We saw a few brave souls crouched down in the water trying to unblock the bags and the drains.

Jaipur is the global centre of gem cutting and setting. Almost 95% of the world’s coloured stones are cut in Jaipur. We visited a manufacturing jeweller where highly skilled workers create gold jewellery; they wear tunics that can be washed to recover gold dust that settles on them while they work. We also went to the retail part of this business; we avoided the lavish (and beautiful) Indian jewellery but I succumbed to an elegant amethyst ring. I was tempted by a yellow topaz (my lucky colour!) but I settled for my conventional purple birthstone.

We also went to see the traditional Rajasthani craft of carpets. And yes, we did buy a carpet that will be shipped to us.

The same cooperative does hand-printed textiles too. We bought an elephant table runner, which you will see when you next visit us.

We’re staying at another lovely hotel, the Oberoi Rajvilas, on 32 acres of gardens. It requires a golf buggy (or a very long walk) to get from one section to another. Our welcome dinner included this local lady making traditional flatbreads from the region – corn and pearl millet – cooked over the fire. The light was terrible but the process was fascinating. The final product is brushed with ghee.

I’m a huge fan of Indian flatbreads. We’ve indulged in plenty of garlic naan wherever we’ve been.

We were also given Indian scarves and turbans as gifts. A handsome man arranged turbans for all the male guests.

Our group consists of Australians, New Zealanders, English, Americans, Canadians and one Israeli couple. They're all very nice, but I do feel that turbans look weird on white men. We also saw more traditional dancers with amazing balancing skills.

I have fallen in love with Indian desserts. This is gulab jamun, which is a dough cooked in sweet syrup. They look like plums but really they are dough balls. A very similar dessert is flat dough pieces, also in syrup, called malpua. They might look like sliced potatoes but they're pancakes. The creamy cardamom-pistachio sauce goes with it. And then there is candied pumpkin. It's fantastic.

On a frivolous note, Jaipur is the setting for the film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I’m going to watch it again when I get home with a new sense of place.

Next: Cruising the Ganges River (1)

This really looks better on a big screen. www.julie-anne.online