Tuesday 12th February 2019
Today is our last day of riding and we have only a short way to go to the Jaipur 🙁 the capital of Rajasthan and the home office of Indian Rides. Before we set off a guy from the hotel offered us an hour’s tour round the village, which was quiet a large one; we set off on foot at 9am just as the village was coming to life..this turned out to be a really interesting hour spent seeing how the local people live. They were happy to have their photos taken and to show us their kids and their homes; everyone was friendly and the kids on their way to school all said good morning.
Hello 
Carrying home the milk 
Good mornng 
School kids
Everything and anything carried on the head 
One house we stopped at invited us (I think) to take a closer look..interesting. We frightened the children, but thankfully not the Water Buffalo 🙂
A collection of village faces, Old 
and young 
All happy to see us 
nOur hour was soon up and it was time to throw a leg over the Royal Enfield for the last time. We thundered off in a cloud of dust with thoughts of those friendly people in our heads. The ride was uneventful, we are used to dicing with the traffic now..I’ve even found out where the horn is 🙂 We arrived in Jaipur at the Indian Rides HQ which is on the outskirts of the city, known as the “Pink City”, for reasons that will become apparent later. We parked the bikes and set off by car for our hotel, stopping at the Royal Enfield dealership on the way to pay homage and buy the T-shirt.
Made in India 
Started in UK
Narendra had invited us to dinner at his home this evening, which was a nice gesture. The hotel was a nice one with lots of hot water!! We walked to Narendra’s house about 1km away, its a family house; we met his wife and son, his brother, his sister, father and mother. Also there were a French couple who had been on 6 trips with Indian Rides and have become real friends. We drank rum before dinner and the English/French good natured baiting started..the guy was a Goldwing rider !! Narendra’s wife was cooking dinner as we drank more rum, washed down with Kingfisher beer at the table. We were presented with Indian Rides T-shirts and also tea mugs with our individual pictures on, which was a nice touch. We figured out that overall we had ridden 1,100 miles, shame its over.
Indian Rides group pic 
Has Fred had too much rum? 
Milway mug
We finally found our way back to the hotel in spite of the rum and beer; tomorrow we would have a tour of the “Pink City”
A day in Jaipur: Wednesday 13th February 2019
Our guide arrived at 9am, we were all present except Fred who decided to stay at the hotel and chill out..nothing to do with all the rum he had last night 🙂 The first stop immediately introduced us to the Pink of the “Pink City”. Partly its because of the colour of the stone used in construction and also the fact that when the Prince of Wales & Queen Victoria visited in 1876 the Maharaja Ram Singh of Jaipur painted the whole city pink in colour to welcome the guests as pink denotes the colour of hospitality. Outside this building a snake charmer plied his wares for the tourists.
Its Pink 
Getting excited 
Being charmed
We then headed for the famous Amber Fort..this is a very impressive building with a 16Kms wall around it. It was possible to get to the fort by Elephant, but this is a real tourist trap and the queues were long, so we drove up through the narrow streets.
The Amber Fort 
Lazy way up 
Entrance 
High on the hill 
a continual stream of Elephants
Our guide showed us round and at one point we asked for a chai break; to our amusement he made a call on his mobile and a chai wallah came running with a teapot of chai and some paper cups..impressive 🙂
The King’s garden inside the fort 
And some culkture 
and some merchants 
and some Elephants
It was time for lunch so we drove back into Jaipur to a nice restaurant, behind which was the oldest bakery in Jaipur (so the guide said). After lunch we did some present shopping, doing our best get the lowest price on everything we could..we’ll never know if we left money on the table. The plan then is to visit and walk around the old town of Jaipur.
The oldest bakery 
Flower market 
Spices 
Nuts 
We walked though the narrow, congested streets picking our way across roads with a constant flow of traffic. This is a fascinating area and one where you can by anything from a carpet, to nuts and bolts to spices, vegetables, tools..anything in fact. We came to an area where there were lots of monkeys climbing on buildings and swinging on trees. People here seem to like the monkeys and will feed them bananas and oranges.
Funny face 
Mum and baby 
Spot the human 
I like bananas 
On the look out
Just as we were returning to the hotel my phone went; it was Shakti, Narendra’s bother. Apparently there was a problem with protesters for workers rights blocking the road to Agra in two places and our plan to visit the Taj Mahal was looking impossible and instead we would have to go straight to Delhi instead! I said I would discuss it with the guys and call him back. We all want to go to see the Taj and felt there must be a way round the blockage, we certainly weren’t giving up on the Taj. Bo, who is also a pilot looked into chartering a plane (expensive option) and we looked at commercial flights also. We decided the best thing would be to meet Shakti in person and sort this out (Narendra had gone to a wedding for a couple of days). The final outcome was that we would go to Agra after all and a mini bus would pick us up at 6:30 am the next morning for the 5 hr journey to the Taj..result!